Learning Literature & Poetics, and the Formation of Monastic Culture in the Carolingian World

By Eileen Margaret Jacxsens BA University of Richmond, 2000 MA Catholic University of America, 2002 AM Brown University, 2004

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History at Brown University.

Providence, Rhode Island May, 2011 Copyright by Eileen M. Jacxsens 2010

2 This dissertation by Eileen M. Jacxsens is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Date______Prof. Amy G. Remensnyder, Advisor

Recommended to the Graduate Council

Date______Prof. John Bodel, Reader

Date______Prof. Joseph Pucci, Reader

Approved by the Graduate Council

Date______Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School

iii Curriculum Vitae

Eileen Margaret Jacxsens Born: June 17, 1978 Native of Washington, DC

Education:

Brown University, Providence, RI PhD in History, May 2011 Dissertation: “Learning, Literature, & Poetics, and the Formation of Monastic Culture in the Carolingian World” Advisor: Dr. Amy Remensnyder AM in History, May 2004

Catholic University of America, Washington, DC MA, with honors, in Medieval Studies, May 2002 University of Richmond, Richmond, VA BA, cum laude, Major in History, May 2000

Grants and Awards: Vartan Gregorian Dissertation Fellowship, Brown University, 2007-2008 Summer Fellow, Program in Applied Paleography, American Academy in Rome, 2005 Maude Howlett Woodfin & Susan Lough Grant for Graduate Study in History, University of Richmond, 2003-2006 Roy J. Deferrari Doctoral Scholarship, Catholic University of America, 2000-2003

Graduate Fields: Medieval Europe (Major Field), Professor Amy Remensnyder Roman Empire, Professor John Bodel Christianity in the Eastern Empire, Professor Susan Harvey

iv for Ellie

v Acknowledgments

The completion of this dissertation would not have been possible without generous financial support for study, research, and writing from the Brown University Graduate

School the University of Richmond, and the American Academy in Rome. I owe my deepest debt of gratitude to my dissertation committee. I thank Professor Amy Remensnyder for her encouragement as I discovered my interest in Carolingian literature and monastic education and, above all, for her example of scholarship, dedication to teaching, and her critical and exacting comments on my work. I thank my readers, Professor John Bodel, for his encouragement, which thankfully crossed over into nagging from time to time, and also for his friendship over the course of my graduate study, and Professor Joseph Pucci, whose sensitivity to the beauty and depth of medieval Latin poetry gave me the confidence to pursue this neglected body of work as a dissertation topic and, I hope, as a career. For the technical expertise needed to complete this project, I must thank Professor Uta-Renate Blumenthal,

Professor Frank A.C. Mantello, Professor John F. Petruccione, all of Catholic University of

America, and Professor Christopher Celenza of Johns Hopkins University.

I also thank Professor Jeanne-Nicole Saint-Laurent, Saint Michael’s College;

Professor Walt Stevenson, University of Richmond; Professor Sheila Bonde, Brown

University; Professor Jenny Knust, Boston University; Professor Sonia Sabnis, Reed College;

Christine Kralik, University of Toronto for encouragement, comments on my drafts, friendship and support.

This project required many hours and much energy, and the sacrifice and understanding of those I love the most. I thank my parents and siblings for believing this would culminate in a degree even when I doubted it was possible. I thank Justin for his love, patience, and understanding over the past two years. I dedicate this dissertation to Ellie:

Study, study in earnest; in order to be salt and light, you need knowledge, capability.

vi Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ...... viii

List of Abbreviations ...... ix

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 1: Imprinting a Monastic Legacy...... 35

Chapter 2: Lyric & the Creation of Carolingian Benedictinsim...... 62

Chapter 3: The Architecture of Scripture...... 97

Chapter 4: The Monastery & the Textual Community ...... 137

Conclusion...... 170

Appendices ...... 178

Bibliography ...... 189

vii List of Illustrations

Hrabanus Maurus, Inclyta crux domini, Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, fol 12v ...... 104

Hrabanus Maurus, Louis the Pious as Miles Christi, Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, fol. 8v...... 127

viii List of Abbreviations

AASS Acta Sanctorum AHR American Historical Review AJP American Journal of Philology BHL Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum EHR Emglish Historical Review HE Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum JAAR Journal of the American Academy of Religion JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History JMH Journal of Medieval History JRS Journal of Roman Studies

MGH Monumenta Germaniae Histoirica (Hannover/Leipzig/Berlin, etc. (1826 - ) Cap. Capitularia Conc. Concilia Epp. Epistolae Leges Leges Poet. Poetae aevi Carolini SS Scriptores PL J.-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina. 221 vols. (Paris, 1844-64) TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association

ix Introduction

The body of literary works penned by monastic authors of the Carolingian age is an abundant and largely neglected resource for historians interested in the education, learning, and culture of the period. The poetry alone fills four large volumes of the

Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and numerous other volumes contain riches of

Scriptural commentary, letters, and hagiographies, but the scholarship on these literary treasures to date has been sparse in comparison to work done on diplomata from the same period, or annals written by court historians, royal and ecclesiastical scholars, and noblemen.1 Until the recent work of scholars such as Peter Godman, Michael Herren,

Francesco Stella, and Joseph Pucci, the contents of Ernst Dümmler’s editions of Poetae

Latini Aevi Carolini merited little more than references in occasional footnotes in the studies of Carolingian history.2 The literary studies by the above-mentioned scholars

1 MGH, Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, 4 voll., ed. E Dümmler (Berlin, 1881) is the most complete collection of Carolingian poetry. Other collections include C.H. Beeson, ed., A Primer of Medieval Latin; an anthology of prose and poetry, (Chicago, 1925); K.P. Harrington, ed., Mediaeval Latin (Boston, 1925), reprinted several times and recently revised by J. Pucci (Chicago, 2nd ed. 1997). A handful of studies on Medieval Latin literature examined the poetry in particular: J. de Ghellinck, Littérature latine au moyen âge (Paris, 1939); M. Manitius and P. Lehmann, Geschichte der lateinische Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Munich, 1911); M. Manitius, Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Poesie bis zur Mitte des 8. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1891); F. J. E. Raby, A history of Christian-Latin poetry from the beginnings to the close of the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Oxford,, 1953); F. J. E. Raby, A history of secular Latin poetry in the Middle Ages, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Oxford, 1957); and K. Strecker, Einführung in das Mittellatein, 2nd rev. ed. (Berlin, 1929).

2 Recent works on Carolingian poetry include P. Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London, 1985); P. Godman, Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry 1 2 have opened up new avenues for consideration and interpretation of Carolingian literature and its importance in monastic education and communal life. Commentaries on Scripture, saints’ lives, and other literary texts were the basic texts of the monastic school. Monastic scholars of the eighth and ninth century embraced poetry on a scale unseen for centuries in the Latin west. This dissertation will examine the role that literature played in the development of Carolingian monasticism and in the evolving relationship between monasteries, the Carolingian court, and the aristocracy. It will seek to demonstrate that literary works were the means whereby the leading Carolingian monastic scholars defined their identity and sought to assert their role in society.3 Close connections between the Carolingian family, the aristocracy, and professed religious, as well as the Carolingian rulers’ practice of drawing on monastic resources – land, offices, and learning, in particular – to consolidate their power, had led, by the time of

Carolingian monastic reforms, to there being no clear delineation between secular and religious power in the governance of life and discipline within the monasteries. Leading monastic thinkers wanted to separate the practice and governance of life within the

(Oxford, 1987); M. W. Herren, "The De Imagine Tetrici of Walahfrid Strabo: Edition and Translation," The Journal of Medieval Latin 1 (1991); M. W. Herren, "Walahfrid Strabo's De Imagine Tetrici: An Interpretation," in Latin Culture and Medieval Germanic Europe. Proceedings of the First Germania Latina Conference held at the University of Groningen, 26 May 1989, ed. R. North and T. Hofstra (Groningen, 1992); F. Stella, La poesia carolingia latina a tema biblico, Biblioteca di "Medioevo Latino", vol. 9 (Spoleto, 1993); F. Stella, et al, ed., La poesia carolingia (Florence, 1995); F. Stella, Poesia dell'alto Medioevo europeo: manoscritti, lingua e musica dei ritmi latini: atti delle euroconferenze per il Corpus dei ritmi latini (IV-IX sec.), Arezzo, 6-7 novembre 1998 e Ravello, 9-12 settembre 1999, Millennio medievale, vol. 22 (Florence, 2000); and F. Stella, Poesia e teologia (Milan, 2001); K.P. Harrington, ed., Medieval Latin, 2nd ed. rev. J. Pucci, with a grammatical introduction by A.G. Elliott (Chicago, 1997); J. Pucci, “Pied Beauty: Paul the Deacon’s Poem to Lake Como,” Latomus 58 (1999), 872-84.

3 The role of monastics in society was a tricky concept for them to address. Monasticism has its origins in separation and isolation from society. But from its earliest days, its social function was inescapable. On this, see P. Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” JRS 61 (1971), 80-101; P. Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1980); P. Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire, The Curti Lectures, 1988 (Madison, WI, 1992); P. Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority, and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford, 1978); A. Sterk, Renouncing the World yet Leading the Church: The Monk-Bishop in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 2004). 3 monastery from the caprices of Carolingian politics without jeopardizing the royal protection they had been able to enjoy.4 Finally, this dissertation will argue that the cohesion that a common literature created between the monastic communities of the

Carolingian Empire served to hold the Frankish kingdoms together socially and culturally even as they began to fragment politically.5

Studies of Carolingian monastic reforms, which continued under royal administration from the middle of the eighth century until about 817, have not adequately credited monastic insiders for the vision and direction they provided. The studies have focused heavily on the royal documents promulgated by the Carolingian

4 Charlemagne recruited monastic advisors and filled his court school with monastic scholars. He did not want to separate monastic and secular education, though he wanted an educational reform program aimed at literacy, not at learning per se. The “missionary context” in which he saw monasteries was aimed at cultural and social cohesion and at imperial consolidation. See M. M. Hildebrandt, The External School in Carolingian Society, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1992), 53-63. Monastic study and education in the Carolingian period centered first and foremost on Scripture, and included selected texts from classical authors, works from the Early Christian Church Fathers – Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine – as well as the writings of Boethius, Cassiodorus, St Benedict, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, the grammarians, and the works of late antique and early medieval Christian poets, such as Venantius Fortunatus. See R. E. Sullivan, ed., The Gentle Voices of Teachers. Aspects of Learning in the Carolingian Age (Columbus, OH, 1995), 60.

5 Historically, too much emphasis has been placed on the fragmentation following the Treaty of Verdun as the moment of the nascence of what are now France and Germany. This emphasis endured from the mid-eighteenth century through the 1950s. See for example, G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte 4 (3rd ed., Berlin, 1885) – Waitz considers the East Frankish kingdom after the Treaty of Verdun the first German Reich; Der Vertrag con Verdun, 843. Neun Aufsätze zur Begründung der Europäischen Völker- und Staatenwelt, ed. T Mayer (Leipzig, 1943); and even later in the twentieth century, Die Entstehung des deutschen Reiches. Deutschland um 900, ed. H. Kämpf, Wege der Forschung 1, (4th ed. Darmstadt, 1971). The refutation of this perception concerning the Treaty of Verdun began with Carlrichard Brühl: C. Brühl, Die Anfänge der deutschen Geschichte, (Wiesbaden, 1972) and more fully argued in C. Brühl, Deutschland – Frankreich: die Geburt zweier Völker, (2nd ed. rev & exp., Cologne, 1995). Even now, the scholarship remains heavily focused on the Frankish kings and nobility, even in studies focused on economic, social and cultural history of the Carolingian period: M. Innes, State and Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Middle Rhine Valley, 400-1000, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life & Thought 4th ser. 47, (Cambridge, 2000) focuses on the independence of the Frankish nobility and the negotiation of power between the crown and local aristocracies. E. Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817-876, (Ithaca, NY 2006), argues similarly that the medieval kingdom existed mainly at the royal court, the meeting place between autonomous local aristocracy and the Carolingian king. 4 king and their impact on monastic life, discipline and culture.6 This approach, in essence, credits the Carolingian ruler for creating the space within which monastic life would subsequently grow, and depicts the development of monasticism in the eighth and ninth centuries as driven and directed by the Carolingian kings. I will argue instead that the shape of Carolingian religious and cultural reforms came primarily out of the monasteries, transmitted through literary texts and in the relationships forged in the monastic schools. Although the monasteries in which these writers lived and worked had close ties to the Carolingian court and the Frankish aristocracy, the writings sought to create a degree of distinctness and distance from the secular realm, and to define monasticism independently and internally. Carolingian monastic authors turned to the

Patristic grammatical and exegetical tradition as the foundation for their semiotics of community.7 Patristic writers exchanged letters and literary works with one another as symbols of friendship and as tangible reminders of the far-flung community to which

6 C. d. Clercq, La legislation religieuse franque: étude sur les actes de conciles et les capitulaires, les statuts diocesains et les règles monastiques (Louvain, 1936); D. A. Bullough, "Europae Pater: Charlemagne and His Achievement in the Light of Recent Research," EHR 85 (1970); H. Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire: The Age of Charlemagne, trans. P. Munz (New York, 1964);F. L. Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy. Studies in Carolingian History (Ithaca, NY, 1971); P. E. Schramm, Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio: Studien zur Geschichte des römischen Erneuerungsgedankens vom Ende des karolingischen Reiches bis zum Investiturstreit (Darmstadt, 1957); J. Semmler, "Die Geschichte der Abtei Lorsch von der Gründung bis zum Ende der Salierzeit 764 bis 1125," in Die Reichsabtei Lorsch. Festschrift zum Gedenken an ihre Stiftung 764, ed. F. Knöpp (Darmstadt, 1973); R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-987 (New York, 1983); W. Hartmann, Die Synoden der Karolingerzeit im Frankenreich und in Italien, Konziliengeschichte, A/ Darstellungen (Paderborn, 1989), and W. Hartmann, Kirche und Kirchenrecht um 900: die Bedeutung der spätkarolingischen Zeit für Tradition und Innovation im kirchlichen Recht (Hannover, 2008).

7 Patristic writers, particularly Saint Augustine, held that words, texts, and signs, had meaning only within an interpretive (linguistic, textual) community, which shared methods of speaking, reading, teaching, and interpreting. The search for meaning – the meaning of the text and the means to convey it – requires a community. “In discovering the meaning of signs we discover a shared world of reference and in so doing we are integrated into our linguistic community... Discovery of meaning frees us from captivity to the sign, and incorporates us in what we might call a textual, or an interpretive, community.” See R. A. Markus, Signs and Meanings. World and Text in Ancient Christianity (Liverpool, 1996), 30. See also M. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: 'grammatica' and literary theory, 350-1100, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, vol. 19 (Cambridge, 1994) and B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ, 1983). 5 they belonged.8 Both the reading and the composition of these texts were considered spiritual exercises, and all those involved in the process of textual exchange – the author, the audience, and, in some cases, the bearer – were integral parts of the interpretive community that enabled the realization of the text as discourse.9 The education necessary for participation in the Carolingian monastic community was the preserve of the monastic school; monastic teachers passed it down to monastic disciples within the confines of the cloister, where learning was characterized by the rhythms of prescribed communal prayer and the labor of study.

This study also will argue that the Carolingian authors of the poetry and literature discussed below have not been adequately credited for their understanding and use of poetics, allusion, and the classical and Christian literary tradition and their success at using these tools to write a body of literature that shaped the internal life of the monasteries of the Carolingian period. The monastic literary works remain a neglected body of evidence, particularly by historians, for two main reasons. The neglect is partially due to a long-standing opinion that the works were poor imitations of classical literature devoid of substantive information, but also because, until recently, there was not a theoretical framework by which to discover the valuable evidence for monastic culture contained in them. Harold Bloom, for example, in his The Anxiety of Influence, argues that originality and creativity were anathema to pre-modern authors, who viewed their predecessors with filial reverence. Monastic discipline further served to stifle creativity and literary ferment because of the importance of obedience as a monastic

8 C. Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford, 2000) discusses this at length in chapters 1 & 2. Also see H. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, CT, 1995), chapters 1 & 3.

9 See Markus, Signs and Meanings, 22-35; and P. Ricœur, From Text to Action, trans. K. Blamey and J.B. Thompson (Evanston, IL, 1991), passim. 6 value.10 The growth of literary criticism in the last half century, fueled by the development of the fields of semiotics and philosophy of language, has created the opportunity to study the role that Carolingian monastic literature had in the monastic reforms, in shaping monastic culture, and in situating monasticism within society as a whole in the eighth and ninth centuries. The primary distinction that this study seeks to make, is between a mentalité, which can be revealed by reading a text, but may be evidence of a worldview unwittingly held by the author, and a “move” made consciously by the author.11 Carolingian scholars have yet to fully explore the importance of these critical concepts for understanding monastic poetry and literature.

* * *

Historians of the Carolingian period a generation ago moved away from both the origins-driven history that had dominated the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, and the emphasis previously placed on the nascence of the European nation state in the Carolingian world. Instead they demonstrated that the cohesion of the

Frankish kingdoms under Carolingian rule centered on the person of the ruler and his relationship with the local nobility and the institutional Church.12 More recently,

10 H. Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence; A Theory of Poetry (Oxford, 1973), 26-27.

11 Mentalité can be something static and passive, imposed on the inhabitants of a particular time and place – D. B. Hamilton, Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (New York, 1992), x, characterizes it as follows: “unconsciously and helplessly reproduced by every...subject merely because that is the language and thought that constitutes a particular culture at a particular moment in time” – the notion of “moves” looks to credit the writer with a reflective activity. According to Hamilton, this concept assumes that the writer positions himself “in relationship to ongoing issues” and seeks to understand “how each side appropriated the idioms and argument of the other side.”

12 Important early works demonstrating this shift include Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire: The Age of Charlemagne; Ganshof, The Carolingians and the Frankish Monarchy. Studies in Carolingian History; J. Freid, “Die karolingische Herrschaftsverband im 9 Jh. zwischen ‘Kirche’ und ‘Konigshaus,’” Historische Zeitschrift, 235, (1982), 1-43; McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians; G. Althoff, Verwandte, Freunde, und Getreue. Zum politischen Stellenwert der Gruppebindungen im früheren Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 1990). R.E. Sullivan called for scholars of the Carolingian period to explore new avenues of inquiry and new methodologies in “The Carolingian Age: Reflections on its Place in the History of the Middle Ages,” Speculum 64 (1989), 267-306 and in R.E. Sullivan, “What Was Carolingian Monasticism? 7

Carolingian history has looked at these personal ties through a number of political biographies, and examined the role of kings, noblemen, and religious in creating

Carolingian culture and fomenting the intellectual and cultural revival that historians have dubbed the Carolingian Renaissance.13 These studies work from the premise that personality of the successful ruler was magnetic and he drew nobles, churchmen, and scholars to his court and surrounded himself with a large cadre of loyal and influential courtiers. This dissertation aims to balance the focus of such works by offering a study of the ways in which monastic scholars and courtiers, and abbots succeeded in shaping the internal culture of the monastery, in offering criticism of the Carolingian court when they felt it necessary, and in negotiating for protections and privileges from the Carolingian rulers, who were engaged in ensuring the maintenance of monastic discipline.

Charlemagne employed the structures, symbols and rituals associated with aristocratic society and the liturgical life of the Church for ‘civilizing’ the peoples of the

Frankish kingdoms over which he ruled. Monasteries that had been established in the sixth and seventh centuries as missionary outposts were ideal centers for teaching a cohesive religious and cultural ideology that in turn would create greater political stability. Charlemagne’s monastic policy focused on the extension of Frankish influence into newly subdued and border regions including Saxony, Aquitaine, the trans-Rhenine lands, and Lombard Italy. In these regions, he brought monasteries directly under royal

The Plan of St. Gall and the History of Monasticism” in After the Fall: Narrators and the Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays presented to Walter Goffart, ed. A.C. Murray (Toronto, 1998), 251-87.

13 The proliferation of studies dedicated to the person of Charlemagne that have been published in recent years is evidence enough of this trend: L. Halphen, Charlemagne et l'Empire carolingien, Bibliothèque de l'évolution de l'humanité. (Paris, 1995); R. Collins, Charlemagne (Toronto, 1998); A. Barbero, Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, trans. A. Cameron (Berkeley, CA, 2004); R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008); in addition to the works on Charlemagne, there are P. Godman and R. Collins, eds., Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840) (Oxford, 1990); J. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London, 1992); and P. Riché, The Carolingians: a family who forged Europe, trans. M.I. Allen (Philadelphia, 1993). 8 control, and he used them to secure these areas for the Carolingians and promote evangelization.14 That is to say, the policy was focused outward from the monastery to the populace at large, and was only concerned with the internal life of the monastery insofar as it affected the ability of monks to properly instruct and convert the laity.

Monasteries established in border regions and newly conquered areas were to be populated by educated and literate monks and clerics and used as a means of

Christianization and enculturation. Charlemagne hoped that improving the level of literacy among the monks and the clergy would help spread Christianity as both a religion and a culture and better unify the Carolingian lands under their king. Education would create a literate elite of religious men, loyal to the Carolingians, sprinkled throughout the kingdom as examples of Christian perfection. In turn, a uniformly

Christian and Frankish population guided and educated by loyal and capable monks and clerics would lead to a more cohesive and stable kingdom.15 Charlemagne’s pragmatism should not be overstated, however, as it seems evident that he was genuinely interested

14 This was essentially the same policy that Pippin III had used before him, though Charlemagne was more interested in the possibility of evangelization than his father had been. See McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, p. 53-59. S. Vanderputten, "Faith and Politics in Early Medieval Society: Charlemagne and the frustrating failure of an ecclesiological project," Revue d'histoire ecclesiastique 96 (2001), 311-32, details the goals of Charlemagne’s reform program and describes why it ultimately fell short.

15 Charlemagne opens his Capitulare Ecclesiasticum of 789 with an exhortation to bishops and clerics to educate the people of the kingdom, correcting errors, teaching proper doctrine and discipline, and living as a good example. The exhortation’s controlling metaphor is pastoral – a shepherd caring for his flock – and invokes images of people living in heavenly peace and harmony. (On the tradition of the myth of the shepherd-king see O. Murray, “The Idea of the Shepherd King from Cyrus to Charlemagne,” in P. Godman & O. Murray, Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition: Essays in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Oxford, 1990), 1-14.) Charlemagne greets the bishops, priests and religious in perpetuae pacis et beatitudinis salutem and ends his greeting by saying that they gather united in Jesus Christ (in laudem et in gloriam domini nostri Iesu Christi congregare). PL, v. 97, col. 151A-152B. A practical example of this policy would be Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony, which was accomplished in 782, after a decade-long effort, with the submission, conversion, and baptism of Widukind, a Westphalian nobleman who had been a key leader of Saxon resistance and revolts. Rosamond McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 62, characterized these baptisms as “rather statements of political realignment than affirmations of religious faith.” And, in fact, Christianization was subsequent to baptism in Saxony; Charlemagne began a missionary effort there in earnest after 785. 9 in promoting both piety and learning as ends in themselves as well as supports for promoting stability and cultural cohesion.16

The programmatic royal documents, written for Charlemagne by the monk

Alcuin, focus on the spiritual importance of literacy and learning. At the beginning of

Charlemagne’s reign, a number of large monasteries and bishoprics in Francia were held by powerful nobles who were interested in the wealth and income attached to them.

They conveniently neglected the spiritual aspect of the offices. Charlemagne, like Pippin

III before him, tried to set a standard for monastic life in community and under a regula.17 The rule of choice for both father and son was the Rule of Benedict, though other rules such as the Regula canonicorum of Chrodegang of Metz, which bore the influence of Benedict’s Rule, were adopted also. When Pippin III brought the monastery of St Gall under royal control in the early 750s, he subjected the monastery to the

Benedictine Rule.18 In the capitularies from various synods, the instructions on regular life for monks echo the Benedictine Rule: monks are to remain within the monastery and not wander about;19 the abbot must live with his monks; a monk may not become a

16 Many of Charlemagne’s contemporaries praise him for his love and patronage of learning – Modoin calls him Carolus sapiens in a dedicatory verse, MGH Poetae I, 384; Einhard, in his life of Charlemagne, details both Charlemagne’s patronage of learning and his own scholarly pursuits; Angilbert writes that Charlemagne, whom he refers to as David, habere cupit sapientes mente magistros. Cf. MGH, Poetae I, 360. Charlemagne’s genuine interest in learning for its own sake has been noted by modern scholars, most notably, McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 61.

17 In Charlemagne’s earliest surviving capitulary, which came out of an assembly he called at Herstal in 779, the first 7 of the 23 directives address monastic and ecclesiastical matters. One of the capitulae instructs monasteries to remain faithful to the rule upon which they were founded: De monasteriis qui regulares fuerunt, ut secundum regulam vivant (PL, v. 97, col. 127A). J. Semmler, "Pippin III und die Fränkischen Klöster," Francia 3 (1975), 130-146, connects the efforts of the Carolingian rulers to impart throughout their kingdom a unified Roman liturgy and their favoring of the Benedictine Rule because the Office prescribed therein was patterned on the Roman liturgy.

18 McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians , 43-4.

19 Synod of Ver, PL, v. 96, col. 1508-13, cap. 10. 10 hermit without the permission of the abbot.20 The Benedictine Rule’s emphasis on the important presence of an exemplary and authoritative abbot made it particularly suitable to the Carolingian monastic agenda.

Pippin and Charlemagne tried to increase the stability and security of the monasteries by focusing on the spiritual commitment of monastic life. Land given over to a monastery had to remain part of the monastery in perpetuity, and could not be reverted to saecularia habitacula.21 Charlemagne’s Admonitio Generalis of 789 instructed men who had taken vows to remain faithful to them and committed to the regular life. It cautioned monks who subsequently received holy orders not to abandon their commitment to regular life, to steer clear of secular affairs and offices, and to remain chaste.22 Charlemagne’s legislation envisioned monasteries as a place where people could come and see men living Christian perfection and be inspired by them:

Optamus enim vos sicut decet ecclesiae milites, et interius devotos et exterius doctos castosque bene vivendo et scolasticos bene loquendo, ut, quicunque vos propter nomen Domini et sanctae conversationis nobilitatem ad videndum expetierit, sicut de aspectu vestro aedificatur visus, ita quoque de sapientia vestra, quam in legendo seu cantando perceperit, instructus omnipotenti Domino gratias agendo gaudens recedat.23

We desire that you, as befits soldiers of the Church, be both inwardly faithful and outwardly learned and chaste scholars living well and speaking well, in order that, anyone who asks to see you in the name of God or because of the nobility of your holy life may learn from you, just as your look is constructed from your posture, so also from your wisdom, which he may perceive in your reading or your singing, and leave rejoicing and giving thanks to God Almighty.

20 Synod of Frankfurt, PL, v. 97, col. 191-200, cap. 12-13.

21 Admonitio Generalis, PL v. 97, col. 149-84, cap. 31.

22 Admonitio Generalis, cap. 14, 21, 23, 26, 27, 29, 52, 71-2, 76. Many of these directives also get repeated in the capitulary that comes out of the Synod of Frankfurt in 794.

23 In this paper I will use the edition of De litteris colendis found in L. Wallach, “Charlemagne’s De litteris colendis and Alcuin: A Diplomatic-Historical Study,” Speculum 26.2, 1951, p. 288-305. 11

The passage connects the acquisition of sapientia with monastic discipline as does the

Rule of Benedict, which presents twelve steps of humility that move the monk toward a greater perfection of virtue and knowledge.

The model that informed these documents came from several monasteries that had an already long and prestigious history of scholarship. The Carolingian royal family had favored a number of monasteries that had active scriptoria and were well-known scholarly centers: Corbie, Saint-Denis, and Tours among them. Charlemagne hoped to improve upon and spread this monastic model beyond the Carolingian heartland and southern Gaul to newly acquired lands.24 The royal court that Charlemagne assembled in the 780s helped him develop a model for the monastic school and a curriculum focused on improving the discipline of monastic life. Alcuin arrived at court in the early

780s and is credited with drafting the De litteris colendis. In this letter, knowledge and wisdom are made synonymous with the study of literature and study is given as high an importance as obedience to the monastic rule:

Notum igitur sit Deo placitae devotioni vestrae, quia nos una cum fidelibus nostris consideravimus utile esse, ut episcopia et monasteria nobis Christo propitio ad gubernandum commissa praeter regularis vitae ordinem atque sanctae relegionis conversationem etiam in litterarum meditationibus eis qui donante Domino discere possunt secundum uniuscuiusque capacitatem docendi studium debeant impendere, qualiter sicut regularis norma honestatem morum, ita quoque docendi et discendi instantia ordinet et ornet seriem verborum, ut, qui Deo placere appetunt recte vivendo, ei etiam placere non neglegant recte loquendo.25

Therefore, let it be known to your devotion, which is pleasing to God, that we, together with the faithful, have considered it beneficial for the bishoprics and monasteries committed to our governance by Christ’s grace, in addition

24 See McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 59-62, for a detailed discussion of Charlemagne’s policy regarding monasteries and expansion.

25 De lit. col. 12

to the order of regular life and the practice of sacred religion, also in the study of letters, that those who are able to learn through the grace of God ought to teach others, each one according to his own capacity, so that just as the standards of the rule order and adorn virtuous habits, so too perseverance in teaching and learning orders and ordains language, so that those who desire to please God by living rightly should not neglect to please him also by speaking rightly.

This circular letter, Charlemagne writes, was prompted by his receiving a nonnullis monasteriis saepius letters that were so poorly written that he became concerned ne forte, sicut minor erat in scribendo prudentia, ita quoque et multo minor esset quam recte debuisset in sanctarum scripturarum ad intellegendum sapientia.

The Admonitio Generalis provides further details concerning education and study in the monasteries. It directs monasteries to establish schools for boys ut legentium fiant. The document also discusses length the importance of book production and instructs that it not be entrusted to young students:

Et ut...fiant Psalmos, notas, cantus, compotum, grammaticam per singula monasteria vel episcopia, et libros catholicos bene emendatos; quia saepe dum bene aliqui Deum rogare cupiunt, sed per inemendatos libros male rogant. Et pueros vestros non sinite eos vel legendo vel scribendo corrumpere. Et si opus est evangelium psalterium et missale scribere, perfectae aetatis homines scribant cum omni diligentia.26

And, in order that...there may be Psalms, notes, music, the computus of the calendar, and grammars in every monastery and bishopric, and properly emended catholic books; since often while those who seek God inquire well, but they inquire poorly through improperly edited books. And do not permit your boys to corrupt those texts either through reading or writing. And if the task is to copy the gospels, the Psalter or the missal, let men of advanced age copy them with the utmost care.

Proper copying of texts required proper understanding, which required knowledge of grammar and rhetoric and the study of the literary canon. Cum autem, Charlemagne’s

26 Admonitio Generalis, cap. 71. 13 letter argues, in sacris paginis scemata, tropi et caetera his similia inserta inveniantur, nulli dubium est, quod ea unusquisque legens tanto citius spiritaliter intellegit, quanto prius in litterarum magisterio plenius instructus fuerit. Penetrating the meanings of the figures of speech and metaphors was the most difficult aspect of reading and required years of schooling under a learned master.

But Charlemagne envisioned the fruits of monastic learning to extend beyond the walls of the monastery and foster religious and cultural unity within the Frankish kingdoms. To this end, Charlemagne invited scholars to his court and appointed abbots in monasteries to teach and study the texts. His patronage of learning went beyond the political benefits of creating a broad educational system that taught a common culture.

Charlemagne undertook an “ecclesiological project” that aimed at achieving social reform through the efforts of an educated, disciplined, and organized hierarchy of clerics and monks.27

* * *

This study proposes a reexamination of Carolingian monasticism based on the evidence of literary sources composed by monks and within the setting of a monastery.

The reconstruction of Carolingian monastic life, the mentalités of Carolingian monks, as

L. Milis reminds us, has relied heavily on charters, conciliar or synodal decrees, in short, sources that describe the meeting point between the monastery and the world outside.28

It will argue that literary sources address the world within the monastery from the viewpoint of the monk because they were written with the intention of shaping the lives and worldviews of the inhabitants of the monastery.29 Unlike the diplomatic sources,

27 See S. Vanderputten, "Faith and Politics in Early Medieval Society: Charlemagne and the frustrating failure of an ecclesiological project," 311-332.

28 L. Milis, Les moines et le peuple dans l'Europe du moyen âge, Europe & histoire. (Paris, 2002).

29 Scholars such as J.-L. Derouet, "Les possibilities d'interpretation sémiologiques des texts hagiographique," Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France 62 (1976), 153 -62 and A. Gurevich, 14 which prescribed and defined the limits of monastic life from without, literary texts were produced as a foundation for forming the monastic habitus.30 The texts adopted the symbolism and idioms of both classical and early Christian literary tradition in order to shape the attitude and culture of Carolingian monks.

At the heart of this investigation is the concept of a monastic literary aesthetic.

The value of the monastic literary work resided originally in its beauty and the spiritual and meditative act of reading, studying, and pondering the meaning and complexity of the text that the audience or readers received from it. Walter Benjamin in Illuminations calls this quality of a work its “aura” and Hans-Robert Jauss suggests that the auratic quality of medieval literature may reside, not in a single work that “means the world” to the reader, as Benjamin characterized it, but rather in “an expectation which can only be fulfilled by the step from text to text, for here the pleasure is provided by the perception of difference, of an ever-different variation on a basic pattern.”31 This study posits that the literary aesthetic depended not only on situating a text within the canon of literary texts that formed the basis of monastic education and scholarship, but also in situating the texts within the larger context of monastic life, with its repetitions and rhythms. The constitutive intertextuality of monastic literature is its defining feature, both in its

Categories of Medieval Culture, trans. G.L. Campbell (London, 1985) have argued that modern literary criticism, particularly deconstruction and discovery of the sub-text, applied to early medieval hagiographical texts can unlock the thought world of author and audience. P. Fouracre, "Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography," Past & Present 127.1 (1990), 3-38 at 5-8, offers a number of caveats concerning the methodology advocated by the former two studies, particularly regarding the notion that a semiological system within the text can be discovered through the deconstruction of a text and the study of the sub-text. Fouracre argues that a return to a more traditional approach to textual interpretation is still fruitful for early medieval hagiography, particularly because of the importance of topoi in the genre.

30 See P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology, vol. 16 (Cambridge, 1977), especially pp. 72ff. Bourdieu defines habitus as the outlook and expectations produced by the environmental, social, and cultural influences experienced by the subject.

31 W. Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. H. Zohn, 1st ed. (New York, 1968). H. R. Jauss, "The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature," New Literary History 10.2 (1979), 181-229, at 189. 15 production and its reception. Because the medieval text did not stand on its own and required knowledge of the literary canon as well as the lived experience of monastic life, an education within the monastery was a prerequisite to membership in the literary community.32

The importance of the literary canon and the relationship of any single text to the community of texts meant that the significance of an individual text could only be grasped by situating the text in the canon. A text wholly original unto itself in this aesthetic context would have been essentially devoid of meaning because meaning was derived from its imitation of and variation from the forms and conventions of the canon.

The textual community relied on continuity with the canon as a basis for interpretation, and the author situated himself within the tradition of texts and the community of his addressees in order to produce a text that served to develop, communicate, and legitimize social norms within that community.

The Carolingian crown and aristocracy saw monastic education in the context of the early Frankish use of monasteries as missionary outposts for newly Christian and nominally Christian populations and then as centers for the promotion of social and moral reform. Education, as such, was the means of adapting the individual to

Carolingian society and instituting a more cohesive Carolingian Christian culture. The monastery should be open to the local populace and monastic education available to the sons of the local aristocracy. Monastic reformers of the eighth century, on the other hand, emphasized the tradition of withdrawal from the world that had been a strong component of both early Christian and insular monasticism, and envisioned monastic education as unique and the goal of this education the formation of monks, not the

32 For those who could not appreciate the intertextual aesthetic, literacy (reified) and the book still possessed an auratic quality. And the monastic preservation of education and their circling of the wagons, as it were, in this regard, helped to preserve this. Note the prevalence of reading, writing, and study in the illustrations of medieval display Bibles, for example, which would have served to further instill the sense of surprise or wonderment that Benjamin characterized as aura. 16 formation of Christian society at large. Education, from their perspective, was intended to teach monks the ‘language’ and the habitus they needed in order to become part of the interpretive community of the monastery.33

The texts used for monastic education taught reverence for the monastic tradition of the West, particularly the Benedictine and Roman traditions. Monastic literature of this period reveals a sense of continuity with the past, not a break from it or a self- conscious return to it. The texts display reverence for early Benedictinism and for

Roman literary style, but absent is the anxiety over connections to the Roman tradition that the Patristic writers often displayed. This is an important feature of Carolingian monasticism that has not been sufficiently discussed in the scholarship of the

Carolingian reforms or monastic life. The present study attempts to redress this oversight by examining, in the first pair of chapters, monastic use of inscriptions and poetry to link monastic architecture to its Roman heritage and, in the second pair of chapters, how Carolingian monks appropriated and retooled the Benedictine monastic tradition. The linkage that Carolingian monastic authors felt to both the Roman and

Christian past requires some clarification of the notion of a Carolingian renaissance.

The adoption of the term “Carolingian Renaissance” in scholarship on the

Carolingian period has linked too closely the notion of Renaissance developed by fourteenth-century Italian humanists to Charlemagne’s notion of renovatio imperii. The equation of “renovatio imperii” with “renaissance” elides one of the most important

33 B. Stock, Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past, (Philadelphia, PA, 1996); Markus, Signs & Meanings; Conybeare, Paulinus Noster. Stock argues that literary texts, too often ignored by historians, should be considered “under the guidance of linguistics, semiotics, and hermeneutics” (16) as loci of self-definition and interpretation. Literary texts within a community convey meaning through signs and symbols that members of the community interpret and reinterpret. Community can be built around the consensus regarding the semiotics of the text. Markus traces the development of Early Christian understandings of interpretation and Scriptural exegesis and notes that “both assume and take place within a social group.” Conybeare’s work applies precisely the techniques that Stock advocated to the study of Paulinus of Nola and the textual community in which he participated. 17 aspects of the Carolingian program. The renovatio was not intended to be a ‘renaissance’ per se, but scholarship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries applied

Renaissance attributes to the Carolingian reforms and created a narrative in which the

Europe was rescued from the ‘Dark Ages’ under the Carolingians, and attributed to the

Carolingian a central role in the creation of a European culture and political landscape.34

Although Charlemagne’s program employed visual and rhetorical connections to the

Roman past, it aimed at establishing legitimacy through a moral reform of society. The

Carolingian royal program embraced classical art, architecture, and literature as part of the Christian and western heritage, as a continuation of the past, not a return to it.

Above all, it was an effort aimed at greater societal cohesion promoted by Charlemagne and implemented by court scholars. Though a considerable proportion of the scholars at court were monks, the monastic literary tradition developed somewhat separately, both in form and intention, from the larger renovatio.

Eighth- and ninth-century monastic literature reveals that Carolingian scholars placed their work in a continuous relationship with the Roman literary canon that had evolved over the centuries. In the first centuries of Christianity, when Roman civic life and the schools still remained strong, a man who rejected education was symbolizing his rejection of aristocratic life and of the engagements and entanglements of the world. As

Christianity became the religion of the educated and elite, the need to reject the cultural inheritance of the classical world as a means of distinguishing oneself as a Christian faded; In terms of the prevailing mores and customs, “everyone, for all practical

34 On the use and historiography of the designation ‘Carolingian Renaissance,’ see G. W. Trompf, "The Concept of the Carolingian Renaissance," Journal of the History of Ideas 34.1 (1973); J. J. Contreni, "The Carolingian Renaissance: Education and Literary Culture," in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1995); R. E. Sullivan, "The Carolingian Age: Reflections on its Place in the History of the Middle Ages," Speculum 64 (1989). 18 purposes, was a Christian.”35 By the Carolingian age, to reject aristocratic life and secular attainments meant rejecting military culture, and embracing a quiet life of study and contemplation, modeled on the retirement of the Roman world.36 This, combined with architectural and communal elements of monasteries, led to a renewed close association between Roman traditions and culture and Christian monastic life in the second half of the eighth century.37 As the reforms of Charlemagne pointed to a world that looked like the late Roman empire of the fifth and sixth centuries, the monks of the eighth and ninth centuries found kindred souls in the Christian thinkers of the period –

35 Markus, Signs and Meanings, 46. Markus argues in this work and in R. A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990) that by the late sixth century, the landscape of the Christian world had changed and could no longer mark a clear opposition to the secular, non- Christian Roman world. “[T]he powerful threads that bound together traditional Roman religion and intellectual culture within a flourishing municipal life” (223) no longer existed. Markus further notes that this was not the end of Roman intellectual life, and that much of the classical intellectual tradition was employed in a “scripturally defined perspective” and that it provided “a fruitful play of internal tensions for [Christian discourse’s] enrichment and growth” (224-25).

36 In the letters of Servatus Lupus, abbot of Ferrières, Lupus of Ferrières, Correspondance de Loup de Ferrières, trans. L. Levillain, 2 vols. (Paris, 1927), he repeatedly expresses frustration with the administrative and political duties of an abbot because they take him away from his studies. In a letter (Ep. 27) to Hrabanus Maurus, his former teacher, upon his retirement as abbot of Fulda, Lupus characterized abbacy as burdened with administrative duties and noted that his former teacher would now rebus divinis solummodo nunc esse intentos. His letter to Pardulus of Laon (Ep. 72) laments Charles’s lack of interest in and consideration for Lupus’s studies. This sentiment appears in earlier letters as well. The first letter Lupus wrote to Einhard (Ep. 1) expresses his love for learning and his sadness that it is not better received by men of the world: Amor litterarum ab ipso fere initio pueritiae mihi est innatus, nec earum, ut nunc a plerisque vocantur, superstitiosa vel [supervacua] otia fastidivi; et, nisi intercessisset inopia praeceptorum et longo situ collapsa priorum studia pene interissent, largiente Deo, meae aviditati satisfacere forsitan potuissem. He goes on to say: Nunc oneri sunt qui aliquid discere affectant...Ita, dum alii dignam sapientiae palmam non capiunt, alii famam verentur indignam, a tam praeclaro opere destiterunt. He echoes these sentiments again in an 845 letter (Ep. 45) to his old friend Louis: Cupio etiam, si Dei placet, quod didici et semper disco docere. This comes at the end of a list of Lupus’s concerns and he continues, Quas res, praeter ultimam (ea enim velut reipublicae inutilis judicaretur, quae meo judicio ceterarum est gravissima), si me evocare voluerit ad comitatum, regi, quaeso, suggerite.

37 Recent archaeological work at the Carolingian monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno in south- central Italy illustrates the connection between Roman and monastic traditions. See R. Hodges and J. Mitchell, San Vincenzo al Volturno: The Archaeology, Art, and Territory of an Early Medieval Monastery, BAR International Series 252 (Oxford, 1985) and R. Hodges, San Vincenzo al Volturno, 3 vols., Archaeological monographs of the British School at Rome (London, 1993). The abbey of San-Riquier in northern France had similar architectural echoes of Roman villae rusticae. See S. A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier: The Symbolic Vision of Angilbert (Philadelphia, 1995). 19

Saint Benedict, Boethius, and Gregory the Great. Monastic life in Italy and in the Gallo-

Roman areas north of the Alps was imbued with reminders of this heritage; it was literally surrounded by the remnants of Roman Christian learned culture.38

The monastic model from the south entailed aristocratic men leaving the affairs and attainments of the secular world behind and taking up a life of contemplation and prayer in the countryside. Often, these monasteries grew up where Roman villae had once been. The connotations of the country estate remained, to some degree, in the structure of the villa, and the monastic life easily became associated with the leisure of study. This was not the strict and difficult study of the schoolboy, punctuated by the harsh discipline of the master, but the leisure of study that Cicero linked to peaceful retirement from worldly affairs.39 The architectural space of many Gallo-Roman villae- cum-monasteries lent itself to the latter notion of study, while the long tradition of monastic literature often invoked discipline and effort as hallmarks of religious life.40

The intent of the early monastic communities was not to transfer the former authority and status of the Roman aristocracy to themselves. Instead, these were the rural

38 By the late fifth century or early sixth century, Christianity could be taken for granted as the norm in the Roman world; its inhabitants were measured as more or less Christian, not as either Christian or pagan. See R. A. Markus, From Augustine to Gregory the Great: History and Christianity in Late Antiquity (London, 1983), R. A. Markus, Gregory the Great and his World (Cambridge, 1997), and P. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA, 2003). Monks in the eighth and ninth centuries also benefited from the distance between themselves and classical Rome and the spread of Christianity throughout western Europe. Building on the work of scholars like Venantius Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours, whose careers effected a union between “Roman” and “Christian” and opposed these to “barbarian” and “pagan,” the scholars of the Carolingian court could appropriate themes, imagery and diction from the classical Roman canon and re-inscribe them with new meanings without having the same sort of identity crisis that plagued Saint Jerome.

39 Cicero, De Oratore 1.1.3: ac fuit cum mihi quoque initium requiescendi atque animum ad utriusque nostrum praeclara studia referendi fore iustum et prope ab omnibus concessum arbitrarer, si infinitus forensium rerum labor et ambitionis occupatio decursu honorum, etiam aetatis flexu constitisset.

40 On the architecture, see P. Héliot, L'abbaye de Corbie, ses églises et ses bâtiments, Bibliothèque de la Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, fasc. 29 (Louvain, 1957); Hodges and Mitchell, San Vincenzo al Volturno: The Archaeology, Art, and Territory of an Early Medieval Monastery ; and J. Leclercq, Otia monastica: études sur le vocabulaire de la contemplation au Moyen Age, Studia Anselmiana, vol. 51 (Rome, 1963). 20 monastic retreats of the Early Christian households turned ascetic communities, like

Augustine’s Cassiciacum retreat, or his community at Hippo, or Paulinus of Nola’s ascetic household.

Almost as if in homage to the Early Christian tradition, Carolingian writers echo the harsh criticisms of pagan learning and literature of their patristic forebears, but the writings of Carolingian scholars belie their protests against the pagan classics. The distance from pagan society allowed the medieval authors to employ allusions to the classical tradition without the overwhelming anxiety over their pagan roots that earlier

Christian authors had felt. This study intends to demonstrate the variety of ways in which Carolingian monastic authors employed these literary echoes in their own writing and demonstrate the ways in which these authors redefined the metaphorical and symbolic meanings of classical allusions. In order to examine how they engaged the classical tradition in their works, it is important to recognize that Carolingian authors neither were unaware of nor ignored the ancient contexts of their allusions. Scholars of early medieval literature and textual transmission have historically been quite conservative in their estimates concerning the volume and the quality of classical literature available to Europe after the seventh century.41 The poetry examined in this study demands that we reconsider these estimates. Often the allusions that eighth- and ninth-century authors employ draw force from their ancient context, even if the new situation of the allusion in the text turns the ancient meaning on its head.

In order to characterize how monastic writers of the eighth and ninth centuries employed classical allusions, I refer to Harold Bloom’s model for how Romantic poets

41 B. Bischoff, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, trans. M.M. Gorman (Cambridge, 1994). 21 dealt with the work of their predecessors.42 I have chosen to begin with Bloom’s influential work because it has helped to foster a conception of the medieval scholar and poet that has limited the interest in precisely the sort of literature that this dissertation hopes to dust off and reconsider. Bloom argues that English poets, who followed prolific masters such as Shakespeare or Milton, became increasingly anxious about the influence that these great poets exerted on their own work and concerned about how they could achieve originality in the shadows of the great poets that had come before them. Bloom divides poets into two categories based on their reaction to the poetic influence of predecessors: “strong” poets are able to misread, as it were, imperfection into the widely perceived perfection achieved by the elder poet, thereby creating space for their own original work, and “weak” poets are those whose works tend toward mere imitation. He places all pre-modern authors in the latter category. Underlying his argument is an assumption that an overly submissive filial reverence of students for their masters and a relatively weak sense of the individual characterized much of medieval European society.43 The Carolingian monastic poets whose life and work will be examined here promote the abasement of self in favor of the monastic community in their writings, but this monastic value does not lend itself to the degree of subservience that Bloom assumes. Instead the monastic authors willingly engage with their literary forebears, both classical and Patristic, employing allusion and symbolism in a number of artful

42 Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence. Bloom argues that “anxiety of influence” is a modern phenomenon, available only to poets after Shakespeare and Milton, and that pre-modern authors, for whom originality and creativity were anathema.

43 Cf. Ibid., 26-27. See also C. Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050-1200, Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching, vol. 19 (London, 1972; reprint, Toronto, 1987), which argues for the late development of a consciousness of the individual defined apart from society in the Middle Ages. 22 ways to inscribe new meanings onto the older texts, received poetic genres, and meters, and other literary conventions.44

Although Bloom argues that the tension between the master and the disciple exists only in modern poetry because originality and individuality were not prized, or even encouraged, in the medieval world, the spread of Christianity and the importance of literacy in Christian culture demanded “strong” authors who could claim Roman classical learning for their own.45 For monks in eighth and ninth century Francia, this anxiety of influence was a result of their dual inheritances - Christian and Roman.46

Western monasticism embraced this melding of traditions in its architecture, in the rhetoric of its vocation, and in the progression of its education. Monastics did this with some degree of ease as compared to Patristic and late-Antique Christian thinkers, in part because Carolingian Europe inherited the Christianized classical culture of the post-

Constantinian Empire and, in part because the misreading of classical works in which the Carolingian monastics engaged was not characterized by the anxiety that Bloom attributes to the moderns, but was prompted, even compelled, by the rise of Christianity

– the watershed event of the Incarnation of the Word of God and what Christian thinkers

44 Several recent studies in the fields of medieval architecture and literature have examined the notion of misprision, which Bloom reserves for modern artists and authors, in the pre-modern period: See D. Kinney, "Roman Architectural Spolia," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 145.2 (2001), 138-161 and T. K. Hubbard, The Pipes of Pan: Intertextuality and Literary Filiation in the Pastoral Tradition from Theocritus to Milton (Ann Arbor, MI, 1998).

45 The importance of the written word, of literacy, and of literate culture in Christianity made the “conversion” of texts a task of great import. As Christianity became part of all aspects of European society and culture in the early Middle Ages – education, government administration, commerce – literacy as a mark of power and as a tool in shaping culture became increasingly valuable. The new elite of monks and clerics had to make their own the esteem formerly accorded the Roman literary elite. On the centrality of learning and literary culture to Christianity see A. Grafton, Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea (Cambridge, MA, 2006); Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 232-47; M. L. W. Laistner, Thought and Letters in Western Europe, A.D. 500 to 900, New ed. (London, 1957); and H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (New York, 1956).

46 R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (London, 1993) and Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200- 1000 discuss the importance of the union of Roman and Christian at length. 23 understood the revelation of the Word to mean for language and how it signifies.

Charlemagne’s conquests and the missionary work that went hand in hand with his military triumphs served to reinforce this notion in the early Carolingian period. In subsequent generations, monastic authors looked to aspects of classical culture that equated learning with leisure and retirement from worldly affairs in order to define their community over against the political world that too often intruded into the monastery.

Carolingian scholars had to appropriate themes, imagery, and diction from the classical Roman canon and re-inscribe them with new meanings. Here the Carolingian monastic scholars tackled what their Patristic predecessors had not: They accepted the works of classical authors as part of their canon, and sought the appropriation of all

Roman literary and poetic forms for their own culture. This required the writers of the eighth and ninth centuries to be what Harold Bloom called “strong” poets; they had to

“misread” the classical authors in order to create a literary tradition that suited their culture and communal needs.47 The poets of the Carolingian period were not creating a body of literature that was separate from the classical tradition, but rather one that was a continuation of that tradition and in dialogue with it.

Bloom’s notion of “anxiety” and his identification of “strong” poets opens up a reconsideration of the purpose of classical borrowing in medieval culture. Literary borrowing, like the employment of architectural spolia, has previously been dismissed as

“synecdochic representations of the ‘classical tradition’ and medieval reuse as a means of

47 They intended to inscribe the texts with their own cultural values and societal norms. See Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: 'grammatica' and literary theory, 350-1100, 155-161. Bloom’s argument characterizes poets who manage to produce more than mere imitation and idealization of prior poets “strong.” Employing “strong” and “weak” as his categories of poets, Bloom notes the struggle involved in literary production. He calls the poets’ anxiety “immense” (5). The “hungry generations” of poets, he writes, “go on treading one another down.” Learning, study and writing elicited the same sort of sentiments from Carolingian monks. They wrestled with texts and language and struggled over meaning and exegesis. Literary production was intensive labor and exhausting exercise. Where Bloom’s poets express intimidation, fright, a feeling of being dominated by their predecessors, the Christian poets of the Early Middle Ages, as heirs of Roman literary tradition and forms, feel seduced by their forebears and compose their own work to oppose that seduction. 24 perpetuating that tradition through quotation, appropriation, or emulation.”48 Bloom’s definition of influence opens up the possibility that classical borrowings in medieval literature are not merely reuse, but are instead efforts to inscribe representations of learning and power with new meanings that are intelligible in the radically different culture of the Christianized Frankish Empire.49 This literary effort allowed monastic communities to construct an objective structure for social bonds that would serve to create a community as cohesive as those based on traditional Frankish kinship ties and the like.50 This was done through the systematic education necessary to take part in the monastic textual community, and it had two key effects: 1) it was a means of clearly distinguishing monks from the rest of society and 2) it taught them to view the written word as an instrument of power.51

Monastic education structured the habitus, the perceptions and world-view, of monks, and monastic texts sought to form the values and social norms of monastic students in such a way as to strengthen their commitment to monastic life and their bonds to the monastic community. The tools necessary for reading and interpretation

48 This critique is from Kinney, "Roman Architectural Spolia," 139.

49 A number of excellent studies in the fields of art and architectural history already have moved those fields in this direction. In addition to Kinney, ibid., see B. Brenk, "Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus Ideology," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41. Studies on Art and Archeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (1987); L. Nees, "Theodulf's Mythical Silver Hercules Vase, Poetica Vanitas, and the Augustinian Critique of the Roman Heritage," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987); and L. Nees, A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court (Philadelphia, 1991). These studies demonstrate how interpretation of spolia and classical borrowings is not monolithic, and that the intention and reception of the use of classical elements in art and architecture could provide two different meanings.

50 See J. Goody and I. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” in J. Goody, ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), 27-68. The distinction this study draws between organic social structures and objective ones is important to note for Carolingian monasticism because monastic communities had to overcome precisely the sort of organic bonds Goody and Watt discuss and chose literate modes as their objective criteria for doing so.

51 S. Vanderputten, "'Literate Memory' and Social Reassessment in Tenth-Century Monasticism," Mediaevistik 17 (2004), 64-95, at 67-77 has a helpful and insightful discussion of models of literacy and literate communities as they apply to tenth-century monasticism. 25 were taught in the monastic school and also reinforced in the daily life of the monastic community. The eighth-century monastic reforms emphasized the importance of the relationship between master and disciple. This relationship was modeled in part on the early Christian monastic model of an authoritative master who taught more by example than by word. This educational archetype looked back not only to early monasticism, but also to the Patristic age and to classical Rome.

The Carolingian rulers had set a policy of using literacy as an instrument of power, so monastic writers looked to appropriate literary genres not easily accessible to those not educated in the monastic milieu in order to create a community apart from external influences by means of a wholly separate literary tradition.52 The appropriation of classical forms of poetry by Carolingian authors was unprecedented in Latin Christian literature to that point. Carolingian writers employed a variety of ancient meters and genres, including hexameters, the elegiac couplets most readily associated with Ovid and bucolic poetry, and uncommon meters including iambic and Sapphic, particularly for hymns. They wrote verse saints’ lives, hymns, inscriptions, enigmata, as well as moral and educational poetry and even love poetry. Monks and religious studied and copied classical texts in school; they glossed and wrote commentaries on them, and often imitated their diction, meter, and themes in their own writings.

They did not do these things as ‘weak’ imitators of their classical forebears; the

Christian writers of this period employed themes and wording from Roman literature in

52 Vanderputten, "Literate Memory," 72-74, argues that tenth century aristocrats in Flanders used a similar strategy when the set about building a body of literature that would bolster their recently acquired authority, choosing to create a literary tradition out of formerly orally-transmitted sources such as genealogies, Germanic epics, biblical stories, and mythology. Vanderputten argues that “this ‘reinvention’ of the past in order to make important changes in the leadership of society appear acceptable was possible because its immediate origins could be traced back to ... flexible orally transmitted traditions.” Though the monks of the eighth and ninth centuries were not reinterpreting (misreading) oral sources in order to create a literary tradition, they were in a position to canonize the meanings of texts from the distant past, known to a select few intellectual elite. 26 order to create a union between Roman and Christian traditions through literature or literary borrowing and define the cultural and social values of the monastic communities. The intended effect was that Christianity could be defined in cultural and social as well as religious terms.53 Monastic literature served to differentiate the monastery from the secular world, and texts were used to symbolize an invitation or acceptance into the community. For example, a presentation copy of a monastic educational treatise, or a collection of poems offered to the Carolingian ruler, of the sort examined in Chapter 3, below, signaled that the Carolingian emperor was considered part of the monastic community as its patron and protector. Authors of homilies and saints’ lives intended these texts to be read aloud to the laity who came to the monastery creating a local community that would support the monastery. Lyric genres were intended for a literate audience, some of it for monks, secular clergy, the royal court and the literate laity, but the majority was meant to remain internal to the monastic community.

In order to study these layers of the textual community, this dissertation will look at monastic texts as operating both within the realm of things and the realm of signs.

Texts operated on a symbolic level to create a cultural model that carried enough symbolic weight to become a prevailing conception of society.54 Literacy, not just the

53 Prior to the eighth century, Christian literature in Francia could oppose the Christian and Romanized populace to the pagan barbarian Germanic peoples beyond their borders. Gallic hagiographies, for example, cataloged miracles in which pagan temples were destroyed and idols burned to demonstrate the holiness of the featured saint. Carolingian literature, however, distinguishes not between the Christian and the non-Christian, but rather the degrees of perfection of Christian ways of life. Markus notes that the shift in the meaning of conversio is evidence of this: In the early Church, it meant the conversion of a non-Christian to Christianity, but by our period conversio was “something undergone by the Christian soul on its way to perfection” (Markus, Signs and Meanings, 47).

54 M. Corti, "Models and Antimodels in Medieval Culture," New Literary History 10.2 (1979), 339-366, uses the example of the medieval division of society into oratores, bellatores et laboratores to demonstrate how a symbolic model, however incomplete in its definition of society – women are entirely excluded, for example – can become a widely accepted commonplace, consecrated as a cultural model by virtue of its parallelism to the Trinity. 27 texts produced, will be reified to demonstrate its potency in the social and cultural life of

Carolingian Francia. The text and the ability to produce or interpret text was a powerful symbol of authority in the Carolingian world. Ornate display Bibles, in all their grandeur, and the miniatures they contain in which saints and evangelists are routinely depicted sitting at a writing table in the presence of codices attest to the symbolic equation of literacy with authority. Monastic efforts to control access to literacy and to ensure a high quality of education for monks are evidence of the monastic understanding of the power that their command of the written word conferred upon them. Monastic literacy did not consist only of the ability to produce texts; it was above all the capacity to interpret texts.55 The interpretation of a text and the authority that it conveyed depended on the existence of a community of readers and listeners.

Use and interpretation of the classical heritage in Carolingian education was as diverse as the scholars that Charlemagne brought to his court from the British Isles,

Visigothic Spain and Lombard Italy. Each region had its own tradition of monastic scholarship. In Visigothic Spain, ascetic households lived a communal life of simplicity, study, and prayer in the mold of Paulinus of Nola’s community.56 These communities did not necessarily follow a particular Rule, and they grew out of late-Roman noble

55 The intention of monastic education and the definition of monastic literacy was to make textual interpretation a monastic preserve. Of foremost importance was the interpretation of Scripture, but classical, Patristic and monastic literature was also taught in the monastic school. In the sense that a connection can be drawn between the restriction of literacy and monastic authority, it should be noted that the tools for interpretation of texts, not the ability to read or hear them, was restricted. In fact, for monastic communities, it was the opposite: the monks relied on the presence of a community external to their own that served as both an audience for their work and as an external group against which they could differentiate themselves. Monastic education did provide two things that modern ethnolinguists would say places them at the top of the “linguistic hierarchy: 1) a degree of universalism in the written language they used (this supplied by the uniform grammars used to teach the monks), and 2) the methods use to teach monks equated the written word with autonomy, truth, and objectivity. See B. V. Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice, Cambridge studies in oral and literate culture, vol. 9 (Cambridge, 1984), 1-11.

56 M. Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Malden, MA, 2000); D. E. Trout, Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage Series, vol. 27 (Berkeley, CA, 1999); Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola. 28 households. Insular monasticism had a strong scholastic component; monks adapted for their own use the classical liberal arts curriculum and prized the relationship between teacher and pupil. These monasteries also had a long tradition of libraries and scriptoria, among them the notable collections at Wearmouth-Jarrow and at York.

Insular monasticism also valued missionary work and regarded as heroic a monk who left the cloister to missionize new lands and teach and convert monks. These monastic communities had strong ties to Rome and a great deal of respect for papal authority.

These models, and the Italian regular monasticism described above, each contributed to the formation of the Carolingian ideal.

In order to trace the development of Carolingian monastic education and culture

– the monastic habitus – and the importance of monastic literature and poetry in that development, this study will proceed as follows:

IMPRINTING A MONASTIC LEGACY

From the earliest Carolingian monastic reforms, an emphasis on the Rule of

Benedict and on the importance of praying the Divine Office together underscored the primacy of community and limited individualism. Monastic writings, poetry, and saints’ lives from the Carolingian period bear the imprint of this focus on community over the individual and on the monastic family and bonds of loyalty across monastic houses in the

Carolingian realm. These strains of the monastic tradition, these foundations of the monastic habitus, are traceable to the first generation of monks, particularly to the work of Alcuin in the last two decades of the eighth century. Alcuin employed verse inscriptions throughout his monastery at Tours, and even composed inscriptions for other monasteries, as a means of shaping monastic culture and monastic education.

Through these inscriptions, Alcuin sought to redefine certain symbols from the Roman and Christian traditions for the Carolingian monastery. In each successive generation of 29 scholars, the imprint of this habitus, though emphasized in different parts and manifest in different ways, is evident.

Text, literacy, and verbal and written modes of communication held great symbolic value in Christianity, as language and the written word reflected the Word of

God, Christ. Carolingian monastic leaders, who themselves came from the aristocracy, placed scholarship and literacy at the center of their lives. In so doing, they evoked the classical division between negotio and otio, between the affairs of the republic and the leisure needed for study.57 Studying and understanding language, grammar, texts, genres, and poetic meters allowed the monks to imitate and reflect the perfection of

Christ, the logos. But cultivation and appreciation of literary forms also symbolized the

Roman culture onto which the Carolingians had grafted their Christianity. The image that monks used to articulate this relationship was the Roman villa. The poetry is carefully crafted and does not slavishly worship an unrecoverable past age; instead, they set their vision of monastic life in a venerable past, providing continuity with tradition and creating a model of life that is viable in the new political and cultural climate of the

Carolingian Empire.

LYRIC AND THE CREATION OF CAROLINGIAN BENDICTINISM

The second chapter examines the role of poetry in creating Carolingian

Benedictinism. Monastic education looked back to earlier models and used textual exempla to establish ideals, proffer these as normative, and encourage a mimetic

57 D. Trout, “Augustine at Cassiciacum: Otium honestum and the Social Dimensions of Conversion,” Vigiliae Christianae 42 (1988), 132-146; W. A. Laidlaw “Otium,” Greece & Rome, Second Series 15.1 (1968), 42-52; J. Leclercq, Études sur le vocabulaire monastique du moyen âge, Studia Anselmiana, vol. 48 (Rome, 1961); and Leclercq, Otia monastica: études sur le vocabulaire de la contemplation au Moyen Age ; Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola, notes that early ascetic communities embraced the importance of leisure for reading and study of Scripture. For Paulinus and his correspondents, the distinction is not one between a public sphere and a private sphere, as was the case in the classical world, but a division between the affairs of the world and the affairs of the spirit. Reading and study were intended to be communal activities, and ought to produce “something generally available and relevant and shared” (49). 30 response from the student or audience.58 Monastic scholars at Charlemagne’s court used poetry to shape monastic life and education beyond the scope of broader reforms spelled out in royal dictates. Paul the Deacon’s verse life of St Benedict reinterpreted the events recounted in Gregory the Great’s prose life in order to reflect the importance of the master-disciple relationship in the Carolingian monastery and the centrality of study to monastic life in the Carolingian period. In this poem, Paul is able to both pay homage to the life written by his Patristic forebear and “misread,” in a Bloomian sense, the life as a way of inserting into the ancient text contemporary monastic values.

Carolingian monks and religious did not consider their conception of monastic life to be an innovation. They built upon and further articulated the traditions of

Western monasticism in order to re-form monasteries and monastic life. The widespread adoption of the Rule of St Benedict over other monastic rules was not a sudden change, but rather a shift that had been in the making over the course of the eighth century. The rule written by the father of Western monasticism emphasised the importance of community in the life and spiritual growth of a monk. Like the monastic reformers who favored it, the Rule distrusted individual activity and initiative.

The Rule of St Benedict offered the founders and reformers of Frankish monasteries several advantages over the insular customs.59 It organized the day around communal prayer, the Divine Office, and ensured that the community of monks gathered

58 See K. F. Morrison, The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton, 1982) and Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola, particularly her introduction. Mimetic strategies allowed students to interpret authoritative texts and employ allusions to those texts in order to define or redefine the meaning and imagery of the authoritative text. Imitation was used as creative method – commentary could be added to text to assign symbolic meaning, or an allusion to a text could reorient or even invert the meaning of the original context, examples of which we will see in subsequent chapters of this work.

59 Frankish monastic leaders began to favor the Benedictine Rule as early as the seventh century; too often, scholarship overstates the Carolingian shift to the Rule of St Benedict in the reforms spearheaded by Benedict of Aniane and Louis the Pious. Start with D. Ionga-Prat, C. Jeudy, and G. Lobrichon, eds., L'école carolingienne d'Auxerre: de Murethach à Rémi, 830-908 (Paris, 1991), p. 26 and n. 14. 31 as one at regular intervals throughout the day. It detailed the role that that abbot played in forming and maintaining the community of monks, highlighting the importance of obedience to the abbot and making humility the highest virtue for the individual monk.

Finally, the Rule provided monastic ideals, but, beyond the communal praying of the

Divine Office, did not define monastic activity. This allowed Carolingian thinkers, who admired the learning of insular monks and classical antiquity, to emphasize education and study. Paul’s chooses elegy as the genre for his poem in order to mute much of the emphasis on the individual found in Gregory the Great’s Dialogue.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF SCRIPTURE

This chapter further examines the interplay between architecture and monastic poetry by examining the physical and literary structure of a poem by the Carolingian abbot and scholar Hrabanus Maurus. Hrabanus, as abbot of the monastery at Fulda taught many of the great scholars of the third generation of Carolingian monks. This chapter will examine the Carolingian fusion of Roman and Christian achieved through monastic education, and its role in defining the place of the monastery in relation to the rest of Frankish society. Hrabanus employed allusion to Roman literature and Roman architectural forms in his poetry in order to signify the structures of monastic life to his readers.

The second half of the chapter studies a poem by Walafrid Strabo, a student of

Hrabanus, that seeks to reinterpret a classical sculpture. The poem is a masterful example of how Carolingian monks used literary texts and their ability to reinscribe symbols with new meanings and appropriate them into the monastic worldview in order to exert influence and pursue monastic interests at the Carolingian court. 32

THE MONASTERY & THE TEXTUAL TRADITION

The monks engaged in writing the texts that defined and shaped their tradition understood that their efforts depended on education. M. Irvine has noted that “textual communities” depend not only on the existence of a canon of texts, but also on an

“interpretive methodology articulated in a body of commentary which accompanied the texts and instituted their authority.”60 Monastic education, particularly its emphasis on grammar and rhetoric, held the key to proper understanding of the texts and thus of monastic culture and tradition.61 Monastic educators consciously employed literary texts to shape monastic culture and provided the key to interpreting monastic literature through education in the monastic school.

Carolingian monastic education esteemed the relationship, established in the earliest Christian monastic tradition, between master and disciple. The master was a quiet authority figure who taught primarily by example, staying close to the precepts of

Benedict’s Rule concerning silence and speech, and authority. Early education in grammar as well as Scripture and classical literature introduced pupils to the foundations of the monastic textual and interpretive community. This community was not exclusively intramural; letter collections and evidence of the book trade from the ninth century provide ample proof that the monastic community in the Carolingian

Empire shared a common literary culture that served as the kind of objective bond that

Goody and Watt argue are stronger than ties based on family or status.62

60 Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture, 15.

61 Ibid. Irvine defines “text” as a written work that “takes its place in a larger cultural library and which is interpreted as part of a system of other texts, genres, and discourses.” A canon of texts, argues Irvine, owes its existence to an interpretive framework such as grammatica.

62 J. Goody & I. Watt, “The Consequences of Literacy,” in Goody, ed., Literacy in Traditional Societies, 27-68. 33

The ties between teacher and student bound monks across the Carolingian world because monks educated by masters at the more renowned schools received appointments at the royal court and at monasteries throughout the empire. They then sent students from smaller monasteries to these educational centers for their schooling.

Exchanging texts, letters, and other literary works was a means of building and maintaining social bonds. The text swapping provided a monastic and clerical substitute for the gift economy that solidified bonds of friendship and loyalty in the Carolingian world.

The formation of strong monastic communities, both intramurally and between monasteries, enabled monasteries to participate in and influence the culture and politics of the Carolingian kingdom. By the second quarter of the ninth century, the closeness between monasteries and the court, the stability of which was beginning to waver, became as much a liability as a blessing.

The third generation of monastic scholars produced their literature in an increasingly unstable political climate. Their work commented on the symbols and traditions of royal power in order to maintain their access to power and influence. This chapter examines a poem by Walahfrid Strabo that employs both the classical and

Christian traditions in an extended critique of royal administration. The poem claims a vital role for monasteries and monks in the maintenance of peace and flourishing of prosperity of the Carolingian kingdom. The chapter also examines the growing influence of the aristocracy and monastic efforts to combat the instability and fragmentation it caused. Monastic authors intended to create within the community a worldview of monks that would preserve monastic discipline and ensure the survival and prosperity of monastic life in the Carolingian tradition even as the political situation deteriorated.

* * * 34

Carolingian monastic scholars could not and did not intend to revive Roman literary culture; they had to intentionally “misread” aspects of the Roman past, including its literature, in order to form their own tradition, and religious and social customs. In monasteries, the literati of the eighth and ninth century worked to shape and recreate their received tradition and culture. They focused on literature and textual study as the foundation for their monastic culture. Literary study was based on the structured logic of grammar, and provided a body of learning and set of texts that formed the objective basis of their community. It created a network of relationships between monastic teachers and students that spread beyond the walls of any single monastery and proved to be among the strongest loyalties in the Carolingian world. The monastic education that enabled men to participate in this literate community served to underscore the primacy of the monastic community over the individual. The social function of literature and literary theory in this effort deserves careful study. This work is an attempt to begin that study, and to point to some of the key figures, texts, and genres that were used. 1 Imprinting a Monastic Legacy

Among the poetry that survives from Carolingian authors are short carmina written about spaces and rooms in the monastery. These poems are brief descriptions of the activity or activities that should take place in a particular space and they serve to order the activity in the monastic context. Alcuin authored a round of such poems for the monastery of Saint-Martin at Tours, as well as poems for other monasteries, including Saint-Vaast and Saint-Amand, and inscriptions for churches and cathedrals.1

The poems likely were inscribed on the walls of the monastery at Tours, thereby indicating the proper use of the space and the meaning and significance of the activity to any entrant into the room.2 Alcuin wrote these poems at the end of the eighth century,

1 Alcuin’s inscriptions for these monasteries, as well as other inscriptions he wrote are collected in MGH, Poet. lat. I, 304-47.

2 The poems written for Tours survive for us in a seventeenth century edition, later published as A. Du Chesne, Beati Flacci Albini seu Alcuini opera (Regensburg, 1777). This edition relies on a ninth-century MS formerly at St Bertin, but now lost. The PL and MGH editions of Alcuin’s poems rely on Du Chesne’s edition, but consult other MSS containing the poems for alternate readings. There is no twentieth century study of the corpus or significant portion thereof. Although studies of individual poems are scattered throughout other works, none address the inscriptions. See, for example, F. Stella, La poesia carolingia latina a tema biblico, Biblioteca di "Medioevo Latino", vol. 9 (Spoleto, 1993); F. Stella, Poesia dell'alto Medioevo europeo: manoscritti, lingua e musica dei ritmi latini: atti delle euroconferenze per il Corpus dei ritmi latini (IV-IX sec.), Arezzo, 6-7 novembre 1998 e Ravello, 9-12 settembre 1999, Millennio medievale, vol. 22 (Florence, 2000); F. Stella, Poesia e teologia (Milan, 2001); M. Garrison, "Alcuin, Carmen IX and Hrabanus, Ad Bonosum: A Teacher and His Pupil Write Consolation," in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, ed. J. Marenbon (Leiden, 2001), 63-78; and C. S. Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In search of a lost sensibility (Philadelphia, 1999). For archaeological evidence on inscriptions in monasteries, see n. 3, below.

35 36 around the same time that he was writing and advising Charlemagne’s royal statements about education in monasteries.

In composing a series of inscriptions for the monastery at Tours, Alcuin was working within a long-established tradition. Writing surrounded the monks at Tours: the tombstones in the cemetery, the sarcophagi in the basilica, the wall paintings in the church nave and apse, the side chapels, the doorways all had inscriptions either painted or engraved on them. A cycle of poems had been composed in the second half of the fifth century to be engraved on the walls of the basilica at Tours and its annexes. The poems and inscriptions served to define the rooms in which they were engraved, giving the space purpose and dictating the role of the reader within that particular room.3

Similarly, Alcuin’s inscriptions shaped Carolingian monastic culture in its infancy and the themes that they emphasized were the very ones to which succeeding generations returned in their own writings. An examination of these inscriptions both in their own right and as their themes were interpreted by later Carolingian scholars illustrates how

Carolingian authors in successive generations utilized the symbols and idioms of their own teachers to shape the monastic culture and habitus for the circumstances of their own time.4

3 L. Pietri, “Bâtiments et sanctuaires annexes de la basilique Saint-Martin de Tours, à la fin du VIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire de l’église de France, 62 (1976), 223-234. Pietri provides examples of how inscriptions on the walls of chapels and the baptisteries adjoining the basilica of St Martin at Tours functioned to define the spaces. He notes in his study «la tendance qui se manifeste durant le Haut Moyen Âge à la multiplication et au regroupement en un même lieu de plusieurs sanctuaires» and the importance of inscriptions in designating the various functions in turn. Similarly, at San Vincenzo, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of inscriptions throughout the monastery. See San Vincenzo al Volturno: The 1980-86 Excavations, ed. R. Hodges, 2 voll. (London, 1993-95).

4 P. Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology, trans. M. Adamson (Cambridge, 1990) argues that constraints of social status, economic conditions, culture, etc. place similar boundaries on what is perceived to be objectively possible and in turn shapes the beliefs and ideas that constitutes a worldview. Monastic inscriptions had the effect of shaping the monks’ mental conception of the physical space and defining the purpose of that space in their lives. Texts – the Rule, the round of daily prayers, the literary canon they studied in the monastic school, and these inscriptions – were what defined monasticism and created for the monks their own separate identity and worldview. 37

The inscriptions direct the reader’s attention to the unity of monastic daily activities and address everything from eating to sleeping to study. They provide a continuous reminder to the monks of the lifestyle and culture in the monastery. The monastic school was only one place in which the formation of habitus in the medieval monastery took place. Everywhere in the monastery, habitus was carefully inculcated through education, traditions, discipline, and separation. Inscriptions defining monastic life and activities transformed both the culture and the architectural space within the monastery.

Alcuin’s poems favor spaces for reading and study, reflecting the monastic and educational reforms of the late eighth century. Although the history of the Carolingian monastery has been dominated by the Plan of Saint-Gall, which shows a monastery with different rooms as dedicated spaces for the library, the scriptorium, the monastic school, the lay school, and so on, archaeological and literary evidence suggests that early

Carolingian monasteries did not have individual rooms for each of these, but instead used larger multi-purpose rooms, like the cloister, warming room, or assembly room.5

Alcuin’s poems seem to favor this earlier notion of space over the divisions of labor that would be imposed by the separate rooms. His poems carve out spaces for various activities, but continually remind the reader that all monastic activities are linked to one another. The fluidity and circularity of the poems, taken both individually and as a

5 On the predominance of the St-Gall Plan in scholarship, see for example, W. Jacobsen, "Benedikt von Aniane und die Architektur unter Ludwig dem Frommen zwischen 814 und 830," in Atti del XXIV Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell'Arte (Bologna, 1979), 15-22; R. E. Sullivan, "The Carolingian Age: Reflections on its Place in the History of the Middle Ages," Speculum 64 (1989); and W. W. Hornet al., The Plan of St. Gall: A study of the architecture & economy of, & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery, 3 vols., California Studies in the History of Art, 19 (Berkeley, CA, 1979); for archaeology on other Carolingian monasteries, see J. Percival, "Villas and Monasteries in Late Roman Gaul," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48 (1997); R. Hodges and J. Mitchell, San Vincenzo al Volturno: The Archaeology, Art, and Territory of an Early Medieval Monastery, BAR International Series 252 (Oxford, 1985); Jacobsen, "Benedikt von Aniane und die Architektur unter Ludwig dem Frommen zwischen 814 und 830," Atti del XXIV Congresso Internazionale di Storia dell'Arte (Bologna, 1979); and P. Héliot, L'abbaye de Corbie, ses églises et ses bâtiments, Bibliothèque de la Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, fasc. 29 (Louvain, 1957). 38 collection, inscribe a unity on the monastic complex that the St-Gall Plan eliminates.

Monastic scholars and authors returned to Alcuin’s conception of monastic life and the centrality of textual study as the Carolingian ideal throughout the ninth century.

Of the handful of Alcuin’s inscriptions for the monastery at Tours that are preserved for us, two discuss learning and study, one addresses the inscriptions and their purpose, one he wrote for the dormitory, and one for the latrine. The first three poems fit nicely together, addressing related topics and joining the activities about which they are written. The other two, those for the dormitory and the latrine, seek to change mundane necessities into monastic spaces. Unlike the first three, these pertain to discreet rooms, marked off with walls and purpose-built. Alcuin approaches the rooms differently than the multi-purpose spaces to which he assigns the activities in the first three poems, but still links them to the hallmarks of monastic life by means of shared themes and shared diction.

Poems such as Alcuin’s attempted to inscribe on the extant monastic structures a new, distinctively Carolingian monasticism. Many of the monasteries in the Carolingian world were located on donated properties and monasteries could use the existing infrastructure, including buildings, farmland, and access to water. Archaeological excavations at the Carolingian monasteries of San Vincenzo al Volturno and San

Sebastiano at Alatri have revealed that these monasteries occupied sites of late Roman villas.6 The evidence from these excavations suggests that the important architectural hallmarks of these monasteries were those of the Roman villa.7

Although this connection began when a villa became a place for housing monks, monastic communities more often than not substantially altered or rebuilt the structures

6 See E. Fentress, et al., Walls and Memory, The Abbey of San Sebastiano at Alatri from Late Roman Monastery to Renaissance Villa and Beyond (Turnhout, 2005), 33-70, and San Vincenzo al Volturno: The 1980-86 Excavations, ed. R Hodges, 2 voll. (London, 1993-95).

7 See J. Percival, “Villas and Monasteries in Late Roman Gaul,” JEH 48 (1997), 1-21, at 6. 39 shortly after establishing a monastic community in a villa in order to make the buildings more suitable to their needs. The primary focus of the early Carolingian building projects in the late eighth and early ninth century was not the claustral complex, but rather the buildings dedicated to liturgy and worship. Angilbert, abbot of Saint-Riquier, who wrote an account of the renovations he oversaw in the last decade of the eighth century, focused his attention almost entirely on the construction of three churches: one dedicated to the Savior and St Riquier, another to the Virgin Mary and the Apostles, and the third to Saint Benedict and other monastic saints.8 He gives the auxiliary buildings of the monastic complex minimal attention and only briefly addresses their purpose:

Reliqua vero moenia ipsius monasterii eodem Domino cooperante quae hactenus conspiciuntur constructa, sicuti cernuntur, omnia a fundamentis studuimus reaedificare, et ut habitatores illius in eo missarum solemnia frequentare, et omnipotenti Domino delectentur deservire, ipso adiuvante, muro curavimus firmiter ambire.9

Indeed the remaining walls of that monastery, which until now were perceived to have been constructed with the help of the Lord himself, we had taken great care to rebuild them from their foundations just as they are seen. And, in order that the inhabitants of them may frequent the solemnities of the Mass [within the complex] and also that they may delight to fervently serve the omnipotent Lord, we have, with his help, taken care to surround it securely with a wall.

The buildings to be rebuilt were the living quarters and working space for several hundred monks and an additional 100 or so boys, who would live according to monastic custom and be educated in the school at Saint-Riquier.10 Neither the discussion

8 Angilbert, De Restauratione monasterii Centulensis, PL 99 coll. 841D-842C. A number of major Merovingian monastic foundations, including Saint-Vaast and Saint-Amand, and Corbie, initiated building programs in order to give the monastery the symbolically important three churches. See Héliot, L'abbaye de Corbie, ses églises et ses bâtiments , 1-41.

9 Angilbert, De Restauratione monasterii Centulensis, PL 99, coll. 843D-844A.

10 Angilbert says that his community at Saint-Riquier numbered 300 monks and an additional 300 boys in the monastic school (De restauratione, coll. 848A-B). Although Angilbert’s numbers carry Trinitarian symbolism and appear schematic, the community size he envisions is realistic. See S. A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier: The Symbolic Vision of Angilbert 40

Angilbert provides not the surviving drawing of the Carolingian buildings indicate that the monastery at Saint-Riquier constituted an extensive complex that provided distinct working and learning spaces for the inhabitants.11 In addition to the attention paid to the three churches at Saint-Riquier, Angilbert’s narrative of the building program at Saint-

Riquier focuses on the buildings central to the cooperation between the monastic community and the royal court and aristocracy.12

The archaeological findings at the Carolingian monastery of San Vincenzo al

Volturno in Lombardy similarly show that living and working spaces for monks were not as articulated nor did they consist of as many single-purpose rooms as the Saint-Gall

Plan. San Vincenzo benefited from a late eighth/early ninth-century renovation under the abbot Joshua (792-817). Prior to the renovation and expansion of the monastery,

San Vincenzo had been home to 100 monks and occupied about 5000 square meters. In the early ninth century, the community had grown to at least several hundred monks.

Here, too, the building program focused on the abbey church and guest residences.

Although manuscript evidence indicates that San Vincenzo had a sizeable library and active scriptorium, no archaeological evidence of single-purpose space set aside for the copying of books has been found.13

(Philadelphia, 1995), ch. 5, esp. n. 42 on community size. See also D. U. Berlière, "Le nombre des moines dans les anciens monastères," Revue Bénédictine 41-42 (1929-30), 230-261; 19-42.

11 The drawing of Saint-Riquier, of which an Early-Modern copy of the original ninth-century rendering is all that survives for us, is one of only two illustrations of a Carolingian monastery, the other being the Saint-Gall plan. See H. Leclercq, L’ordre bénédictin (Paris, 1930), Plates 7 & 8.

12 M. A. Schroll, Benedictine Monasticism as Reflected in the Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries on the Rule (New York, 1941), 48-49 points out that “[A]ccomodations for guests...appear to be elaborate and perhaps extreme...Monasteries were among the chief hospices of the time and were exhorted by councils to perform this service.” One example of this comes from the Council of Frankfurt in 789, ed. A Werminghoff, MGH Conc. Aevi Carol. I, 165-171. Schroll also notes that the monks from Fulda wrote to Charlemagne in the early ninth century concerning the “immense and superfluous buildings” because the brothers were “exhausted beyond measure” from looking after the guest complex.

13 In their discussion of the Assembly Room outside the Refectory, in San Vincenzo al Volturno: The 1980-86 Excavations Part II, ed. R Hodges, (London, 1995), R. Hodges and J. Mitchell note 41

These building programs did not ignore the monastic community; instead they focused on the symbolic representation of monastic ideals. The experience of living within the monastery defined the purposes and meanings of traditional architectural forms in new ways. Monasteries were intellectual centers, agricultural and industrial centers in addition to being religious centers. Although Angilbert’s building program at

Saint-Riquier emphasizes the importance of surrounding the monastic complex of buildings with a wall to protect the culture and lifestyle of the monks, the monastic complex was a retreat by definition rather than on account of enforced seclusion or architectural barriers. The symbolic, and, to a significant degree, the architectural connection, to the Roman villa and its lifestyle remained part of Carolingian monastic culture. In additional to recalling the Roman aristocratic pursuit of learning, the architectural connection also underscored Carolingian identification with Early Christian monastics and the pursuit of learning and study as a hallmark of monastic life. They considered themselves heirs to the tradition of Paulinus of Nola, Augustine of Hippo, and Martin of Tours, whose religious communities retreated to country estates to pursue a life of ascesis, contemplation, and study.

Archaeological evidence for the monastery of Saint-Martin at Tours is insufficient to say whether the basilica and auxiliary buildings stand on the footprint of a late Roman structure, but both of Saint Martin’s own foundations, at Limoges and at Marmoutier, were built out of late Roman villae, as were many other monasteries in Gaul, Italy, and throughout the lands of the Roman Empire, so there was a strong connection between the cult of Saint Martin, and between Gallic monasticism and the villa. The main church of late eighth-century Carolingian monasteries had an atrium in front of the entrance to

that the chapter house was not a common feature of Carolingian monasteries either, and that the spaces in which the monastic community could gather were the cloister and the warming room. These also may have been the places in which reading, education, and manuscript production occurred. 42 the basilica, off of which were the guest houses and auxiliary buildings. The cloister and monastic complex was located at the other end of the basilica, off the transept or behind the apse. This design, evident at both Saint-Riquier and San Vincenzo al Volturno, is reminiscent of the layout of late Roman villae, particularly in the placement of the church and guest buildings, the public space, in front, and the monks’ private living space in the rear.

The villa that would have loomed largest in the imaginations of Carolingian monastics and provided the most material for symbolic representation was Cicero’s

Tusculan Villa. Details of the architecture, location, and lifestyle of the villa were well- documented in Cicero’s writings and Carolingian scholars read, admired, and imitated

Cicero’s learning. Cicero characterizes the villa as a retreat placed off the beaten path and highlight the importance of the architectural and geographical setting for reading and writing. In his De divinatione, Cicero mentions the library of his villa as the location in which study and discussion or debate occured.14 The symbolic weight of Cicero’s villa to medieval Benedictine monasticism is evident in the 11th-century construction of a monastery on a site containing ruins traditionally purported to be the Tusculanum.15

The symbolism of the late Roman villa linked greater withdrawal from the world of the laity with retreat farther into the monastery.16 The centerpiece of the monastic complex was the cloister just as the peristyle garden had been for the villa. This was set back from the front of the house to give the residents a more private reserve within the villa. Also important to the monastic complex was the presence of space for study, learning, writing, and discussion. In monastic architecture, this space was created not so

14 Cicero, De div. 1.8, 2.8

15 See G. McCracken, “Cicero’s Tusculan Villa,” The Classical Journal 30 (1935), 261-277, at 261- 68.

16 On the symbolic link between the classical villa and withdrawal from public affairs, see S. Treggiari, “Home and Forum: Cicero between ‘Public’ and ‘Private,’” TAPA 128, (1998), pp. 1-23. 43 much by walls and doors as by the imposition of a lifestyle and culture on the space.

Inscriptions like Alcuin’s exhorting the monks to engage in these activities throughout the monastery were a means of creating this atmosphere.

In addition to architectural echoes, the monasteries incorporated decorative aspects of villae as well. Frescoes and stucco decoration adorned the walls of Carolingian churches and monasteries. The extent, content, and style of Carolingian wall painting imitated Roman and early Christian styles. Portraits and biblical narratives on walls imitated Early Christian basilica cycles and tomb paintings.17 Excavations at San

Vincenzo reveal frescoes painted to imitate polychrome marble, decorative flowers, and flowering plants, evidence that the Carolingians had read Vitruvius and intended to imitate the wall paintings that he described in Roman villae.18 Paintings and ornamentation covered the walls of nearly every excavated room at San Vincenzo.

Interior decoration in monasteries could also include narrative fresco cycles and reliefs, spolia, such as columns, and mosaics laid into the floors.19

By covering the walls of the monastic complex with art and text, the monks gave new meanings to their architectural inheritance the same way they were reclaiming their literary heritage. The Roman villa had been the leisurely home of the retired statesman in the classical world. Here he sought to live in peace and pursue the vacatio of his studies.20 Carolingian monastics considered their retreat from worldly affairs and its attendant call to a life of study and textual production as the heir to this architectural

17 J. Mitchell and I. L. Hansen, eds., San Vincenzo al Volturno 3: The finds from the 1980-86 excavations, 2 vols., Studi e ricerche di archeologia e storia dell'arte (Spoleto, 2001).

18 Vitruvius, De architectura, 7.4.4-7.7.1.

19 For an example of reliefs, see S.A. Rabe, Faith, Art, and Politics at Saint-Riquier (Philadelphia, 1995), 117-119, 144 (chapter 5 n. 22 and n. 28). San Vincenzo had floor mosaics and Germigny- des-Près at Orléans had an apse mosaic, see A. Freeman, “Theodulf of Orléans and the Libri Carolini,” Speculum 32 (1957), 663-705, Pl. 4.

20 Cf. J. Leclercq, Otia monastica: études sur le vocabulaire de la contemplation au Moyen Age, Studia Anselmiana, vol. 51 (Rome, 1963), 42-49. 44 symbol. All three generations of Carolingian monastic authors studied here used the idiom of Roman retirement to symbolize their withdrawal from worldly affairs and devotion to a life of study.

The emphasis that Alcuin’s inscriptions place on spaces for learning, study, and text production, spaces that the architecture does not privilege, reveals monks’ efforts at reshaping the spaces they inhabited, an endeavor that often meant redefining spaces built for another purpose. Carolingian monastic life and monastic work emphasized education and segregation from the secular world, and monasteries had to be reshaped and re-imagined in order to accommodate this ideal. The poem Alcuin wrote about the space in which monks copied books gives no indication of a particular room; it instead defines the space by the activity that occurs there. The poem opens with hic, a word that

Alcuin uses to open several poems describing activities that seem to occur in multi- purpose spaces.21 Although the process he describes in the inscription requires a space with all the necessary tools for copying, the poem and its place in the collection of poems does not indicate a separate, purpose-built scriptorium. While the preparation of parchment and ink, the binding and cutting could be done in a workshop rather than where the texts themselves were copied, the space needed to have tables at which the monks could work, and room enough for the proof texts that Alcuin mentions:

Correctosque sibi quaerant studiose libellos. In the poem, the Tours scriptorium is an open space whose boundaries are defined only by the limits of the activity. The space flows easily into its surroundings just as the inscriptions move easily between related activities.

The apology Alcuin provides in the final third of the poem indicates that the work of editing and copying texts, though a longstanding practice at Tours and other Gallic

21 Two poems describing spaces at Tours and another intended for a corridor at St Amand begin with hic. Hic does not open poems about single-use rooms, such as the lavatory, the dormitory, and the refectory. 45 monasteries,22 was not considered proper monastic labor prior to the Carolingian reforms, and thus would not have been given a room inside the cloister complex. Alcuin writes that the work is recognized as opus egregium, offering a defense of the scribes’ labor. He goes on to argue that it is better to engage in the labor of writing than to work in the fields, because it is better to profit the soul than to feed the body.

Est opus egregium sacros jam scribere libros, Nec mercede sua scriptor et ipse caret. Fodere quam vites, melius est scribere libros, Ille suo ventri serviet, iste animae.23

To write holy books is now an esteemed labor, The scribe himself does not go without his wages. It is better to write books than to dig up vines. The latter serves the belly, the former the soul.

Alcuin compares writing to labor in the field and picks up a theme from earlier in the poem. The scribes, he cautioned, must be careful not to sow into the writings of the

Church Fathers their own frivolous words (interserere sua frivola verbis).24 In

Carolingian monasticism, study and writing came to surpass manual labor in value, and the inscription creates and draws attention to a space for scribes and their monastic labor.

The middle two thirds of the poem indicate that Alcuin envisioned an educated troupe of scribes. He expects them to be able to compare and emend texts and to be able to read Latin well enough to properly separate words and punctuate the manuscript. The

22 A. Diem, “The Emergence of Monastic Schools,” Alcuin of York, Scholar at the Carolingian Court, ed. L.A.J.R. Houwen & A.A. MacDonald, Germania Latina 3 (Groningen, 1998), 29-30: “The first Frankish monasteries with a clear tradition of producing and preserving books were founded in the first half of the seventh century.”

23 See Appendix I for fuller context, translations, and notes on poems.

24 Interserere: This word appears rarely in classical Latin, but more commonly among Early Christian and Patristic authors. Ovid, Met. 10.554 is the classical usage with which Alcuin would have been familiar. As for Early Christian occurrences: Jerome, Epist. 124.11.1; Tertullian, De carne Christi, 17.1; Boethius, In Ciceronis topica, Bk 3, p. 324 and Bk. 5, p. 363 refer to insertions into texts. 46 prescriptions he gives to scribes in this poem reflect the concerns and reforms discussed in the Epistola de litteris colendis and the Admonitio generalis.25

Alcuin played a major role in crafting the royal reform documents, but the poems written for Tours place the reforms within the monastic context. Alcuin, acting as abbot, composed inscriptions that encouraged the monks to study in order to better understand theology and bring themselves and their fellow monks closer to knowledge of God. The monks were not to form a literate group of courtiers or learn for the sake of royal service.

Just as the poems could mold the monastic villa into the private retreat of monks, they could place the focus on education and literacy at the service of theological understanding. Alcuin gives monastic reasons for implementing the goals of the royal documents at Tours, pointing out that improperly written texts could cause monks to hear false things read in Church or misunderstand the writings of the Church Fathers.

The royal decrees move as easily between learning and teaching as does Alcuin’s poem.

The Epistola de litteris colendis states that the men chosen to be teachers are those “qui et voluntatem et possibilitatem discendi et desiderium habeant alios instruendi,” and this link between learning and teaching is again asserted in the final couplet of Alcuin’s poem: Vel nova, vel vetera poterit proferre magister / Plurima, quisque legit dicta sacrata Patrum.26

25 Cf. Admonitio Generalis, in MGH LL 2/1:52-62, c. 72: Psalmos, notas, cantus, compotum, grammaticam per singula monasteria vel episcopia et libros catholicos bene emendate; quia saepe, dum bene aliqui Deum rogare cupiunt, sed per inemendatos libros male rogant. Et pueros vestros non sinite eos vel legendo vel scribendo corrumpere; et si opus est evangelium, psalterium et missale scribere, perfectae aetatis homines scribant cum omni diligentia. The Epistola de litteris colendis, MGH LL 2/1:78-79, encourages learning in the monastery “ut facilius et rectius divinarum scripturam mysteria valeatis penetrare. It also emphasizes the importance of correct texts and good teachers for monks, saying that, if properly taught, “in omnipotentis Dei laudibus sine mendaciorum offendiculis cucurrerit lingua. Carolingian commentaries on the Rule of Benedict discuss the need for good reading skills and correct texts in this context. See Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries , 119-120.

26 MGH, LL 2.1, 78-79. 47

The poem for the scriptorium ends with a seeming non sequitur; the final couplet moves away from the writer of the text to the reader, from the composition and copy of texts to studying the writings of the Church Fathers. The magister who will profit from reading the texts is the focus now. But Alcuin ends this final couplet with the same words as he ended the opening couplet – dicta sacrata Patrum – thereby linking the two. In so doing, Alcuin reveals the fluidity that existed between the activities in the monastery. The final couplet is linked explicitly to the initial couplet, and links the task of the scribe to the work of the teacher. The scribe engaged in his own work and learning is not excused from his duty to instruct and learn with his fellow monks. This sort of engagement is evident in the careers of two monastic scholars discussed later in this work, Hrabanus Maurus, whose scholarship and teaching were famous and prolific throughout his career, and of Lupus of Ferrières, whose correspondence shows that he attentively remained a teacher both by example and through his many letters offering texts and textual instruction interpretation to his students.27 Alcuin employs enjambment here, a device he rarely uses in his poetry, to emphasize how profitable and important the role of the scribe is for monastic education. He notes that the copied texts are only salutary insofar as they are read, and, as the middle of the poem explains, readable. The study of these texts should then lead to teaching.

Alcuin’s inscriptions define the spaces in which they are located and in turn, shape the habitus of the monks by shaping the expectations for those spaces in a uniquely monastic way. The union and fluidity of teaching, study, and learning in the monastery is both reflected in the poems and imposed upon the architecture by the inscriptions. Alcuin’s poems indicate that he intended the monks at Tours to think of monastic education both in terms of the community of learners and as a specific activity designated to a specific time and place. Later Carolingian authors develop this idea

27 See chapters 2 and 4, below for more on the careers and writings of Hrabanus and Lupus. 48 further and understand schola to be defined by the activity taking place rather than only by the physical space.28 The inscriptions make many spaces in the monastery places of learning, study, and reflection. The poems address two different groups of monks.

Carmen XCIII opens thus: Hic pueri discant senioris ab ore magistri and explains how the young students should approach their studies and their teachers.29 Then it turns to the teacher and tells him why the education of youth is important. Here the inscriptions reveal another characteristic of monastic space: Alcuin takes for granted that the older monks and the boys live and pray together.30 He encourages the boys to think of the older monks as patres.31 He also considers this mixing of men and boys ideal; the older monks teach the boys and the boys, who on account of their age are quick studies, can

28 The emphasis on corporate learning appears in Hildemar’s Commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, see Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries , 126, and D. Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance (Sigmaringen, 1990), 70ff. A. Diem, “The Emergence of Monastic Schools: The Role of Alcuin,”, 27-44, at 30-32 cites a number of examples where schola designates a community engaged in an activity rather than a physical space. Schola appears in the Admonitio generalis, c. 72. Leclercq, Otia monastica: études sur le vocabulaire de la contemplation au Moyen Age Otia monastica, 78-80 surveys the Carolingian understanding of schola and its relationship to monastic notions of withdrawal and leisure. Hrabanus Maurus expands the realm of the schola by connecting it to vacatio and vacare: Servi subditi estote in omni timore dominis, non tantum bonis et modestis, sed etiam dyscolis. Dyscolis indisciplinatis dicit, nomine ducto a Graeco eloquio, quia Graece schola vocatur locus in quo adolescentes litteralibus studiis operam dare, et audiendos magistros vacare solent: unde schola vacatio interpretatur. Denique in psalmo ubi canimus: Vacate et videte quomodo ego sum Deus, pro eo quod nos dicimus vacate in Graeco habetur scholaste. Hrabanus Maurus, Homiliae 2.27, PL, 110, col. 195 C.

29 Cf. to Carmen XCVII. The phrase ab ore and the closely related in ore are important idioms in Carolingian monastic education, and symbolize the habitus of the monk as much as his speech. See below, pp. 55-56.

30 Unlike after the reforms of Louis the Pious and Benedict of Aniane, oblates in the late eighth/early ninth century were not given a choice to be monks or revert to lay life when they came of age. Thus the boys were considered members of the monastic community once they had entered the monastery as an oblate. See Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries , 76-78, 80- 81.

31 Alcuin’s use of the plural, patres, here is notable because it indicates that the education of boys was considered the duty of the whole monastic community and not just of a single designated magister. See M. de Jong, “From Scolastici to Scioli, Alcuin and the Formation of an Intellectual Élite,” in Alcuin of York, Scholar at the Carolingian Court, 45-57. 49 better recite the prayers and liturgy than older men who might grow tired more easily.32

The inscriptions repeatedly stress the importance of personal relationships between students and teachers and use the image of a father figure, echoing the fundamental relationship that was a hallmark of Early Christian monasticism.

The following poem in Alcuin’s cycle, Carmen XCIV, opens, Hic sedeant sacrae scribentes famina legis, / Nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata Patrum. This poem also shifts easily from copyist to scholar to teacher, as noted above. The poems follow each other nicely. An entirely new room need not be imagined. Because the inscriptions indicate the space being discussed with “hic,” they do not impose boundaries on it; perhaps the reader finishes the first poem and turns to another part of the room, the cloister or the chapter house, and here, in this space, another form of learning and study should be the focus.33 Hic, here, the reader’s attention must focus on a different intellectual pursuit; he must turn away from the schoolmaster and apply himself to writing and copying. The different activity creates a different space.

Another poem encourages the monk to read and reflect on the inscriptions found throughout the monastery, but the poem is not directly about teaching or learning; it is about ascent and the monk’s journey toward God. Alcuin explicitly links this poem to those about study by means of shared themes and diction, so that there is no doubt that study and prayer are inseparable. In the poem written about the education, young boys are educated hymnidicas laudes ut resonare queant. Similarly, the monk who reads the inscriptions throughout the monastery will always have the name of God on his lips and lingua pias resonat per carmina laudes. The scribe, the student, the teacher, each of

32 Alcuin also describes the benefits of having young and old monks live together in Carmen XCVIII, MGH Poet. I, p. 323. He encourages monks to run to prayer, and if they are too old to run like the young, to run in their hearts.

33 Compare this use of hic to its most common employment in classical epigraphy – the tomb inscription. It intends for the reader to pause at the inscription and take note of what he shares the space with at that moment. The space is not clearly defined beyond the inscription. 50 these is above all a monk and Alcuin moves from study to prayer while retaining the theme of reading. The contrast between the quisque legit poterit proferre of Carmen

CXIV and the quisque legens curris in the two poems is notable. Alcuin changes the person of the verbs; the second poem addresses the reader directly. The contemplation encouraged by this inscription is personal, and Alcuin moves from the third person, which reflected the corporate endeavor of study and learning to the second person.

Carmen CXV tells the reader that all monastic activity is aimed at a single goal: the individual’s union with God. The Benedictine Rule discussed ascent in terms of steps on the ladder of humility. Alcuin places this monastic ascent in an architectural setting; the monk is moving upwards on a series of terraces or porches toward heaven and holiness.34

Alcuin locates this particular poem in the palatium, which might be entrance hall, foyer, or vestibule, but he chooses a word that recalls Roman architectural inheritance. It suggests to the reader the authority and antiquity of the classical world and the elevated social status and power housed within the palatium. The grandeur of the spaces addressed in the poem suggests that these were places for both guests and monks. San Vincenzo al Volturno offers an example of a vestibule that opened up at the meeting place of several corridors and would have been a main entranceway for guests as well as a place through which the monks passed several times a day given its proximity to the refectory and assembly room.35 S.A. Rabe notes that at Saint-Riquier, the monastery

34 Pranger, The Artificiality of Christianity, notes that by the eleventh century, monastic architecture had begun to reflect the monastic life, by articulating its separation from society through the increased attention devoted to the claustral complex, and by emphasizing the circularity of time and the immobility and structure of monastic life over against the “mutability, vicissitude, and lack of structure” that characterized the outside world, in the church architecture. This poem demonstrates that this consciousness was in place at the turn of the ninth century among some monastic thinkers. Before the St-Gall Plan, Alcuin is reshaping monastic space and considering is influence on the monastic enterprise. His Grammatica also employs the images of ascent and architectural imagery, including the domus Sapientiae, with its seven columns and seven steps of philosophy. PL 1o1, coll. 853A-854A.

35 See R. Hodges, San Vincenzo al Volturno, vol 2, 1-19. The room, like much of the rest of the monastery was richly decorated with wall paintings and a tile floor. 51

“functioned on at least two levels,” as a place for laity and also for monks; the monastery, church and auxiliary buildings were “a physical representation of the Trinity for ‘all the people of the faithful,’ through its outward, physical appearance and performance,” while at the same time the buildings constituted areas where the monks lived their internal life of perpetual prayer.36 Alcuin’s poem does not require a strictly enclosed architectural setting, but instead relies on the symbolic separation from the world and its affairs.

Alcuin uses the images of palatia and solaria to make the space an allegory for the monastic journey upwards toward God, and, in so doing, adapts to the monastic milieu symbols and idioms drawn from the monks’ prior social status, which they forfeited by entering the monastery, in order to reorder the social hierarchy.

Alcuin employed the symbolism present in monastic architecture and the idiom of classical retirement as a means of asserting the status of monks and religious within the social order of the Carolingian world. Most Carolingian religious came from the aristocracy and had expectations about their place in society and their elite status vis-à- vis the secular nobility.37 As monks, these men had to carve out a different societal role that gained importance as a means of asserting the separate and exalted social status of monastics. The enactment of Carolingian monastic reforms more sharply defined the distinction between monks and secular nobles, creating a tension between the engagement of the monastic and secular spheres and the separateness that the reforms imposed. Alcuin’s use of words borrowed from aristocratic architecture signaled to the

36 Faith, Art, and Politics, 91.

37 On the status and expectations of aristocratic Frankish monks and the social and political importance of their relationships with their secular aristocratic kin groups see R. Le Jan, “ Convents, Violence, and Competition for Power in Seventh-Century Francia,” in F. Theuws, M. d. Jong, and C. van Rhijn, Topographies of Power in the Early Middle Ages, The Transformation of the Roman World Series, vol. 6 (Leiden, 2001), ; R. Le Jan, La royauté et les élites dans l'Europe carolingienne: début IXe siècle aux environs de 920 (Villeneuve d'Ascq, 1998); and R. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe-Xe siècle): essai d'anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995). In her work, Le Jan broadly defines “elites” as those who expect to have access to power and influence in the social or political sphere because of their birth or inherited status or because of acquired knowledge. 52 monks that they possessed an exalted, though separate, status in society and shaped their expectations for preferential treatment by the king, his court, and the secular aristocracy.

In a poem addressed to the monks who “run around reading the verses in these hallowed halls,” Alcuin juxtaposes the delight that the architecture and decor could provide, for which he employs delecto, to the joy of heaven and union with Christ, using rapio in contrast to the earlier delecto. The use of rapio and delecto also points to a shift in monastic ethics that occurred in the Carolingian period. Beginning with the first generation of Carolingian monastic thinkers, the object of monastic desire was redefined.

In a marked split from their Early Christian forebears, Carolingian monastics preferred to link desire to the yearning for a greater understanding and union with the Divine, rather than linking it to human sexual desire and immorality. Ascetic suppression of disordered desire, central to the ethic of previous generations of western monastic thinkers, did not feature prominently in Carolingian monastic thought. Instead,

Carolingian monastic literature employed the classical language of desire to define the monastic quest for wisdom and unity with God as the primary objects of monastic desire, thus moving monastic engagement with desire from an ascetic approach aimed at suppression to a positive yearning for the fruits of their monastic labors.

In using the words palatium and solarium to describe the monastery buildings,

Alcuin evokes images of imperial palaces, courts, and seigneurial estates. When the words appear in classical and biblical contexts, the context is invariably a scene of decadence, excess, and lavishness.38 The poem acknowledges the allure of the

38 Cf., for palatium, Suetonius Calig. 22, Nero 25, Nero 31; Tac. Ann 12.5: The palatium is where Claudius waits while Vitellius sweet talks the Senate into allowing him an incestuous marriage. Cf., for solarium, Suet. Claud. 10; Vulg. Jos. 2:6, 2 Reg. 16:22, 2 Reg. 11:2; Plaut. Mil. 2.3.69. Hildemar’s ninth-century commentary on the Rule of St Benedict calls a place in the monastery the solarium, but does not describe the purpose of the space. See Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries , 28. 53 architectural space of the monastic villa, as it were, in which the monk finds himself. In so doing, the poem offers for subsequent generations of monks the concept of a religious elite in contrast to the Frankish military elite. Alcuin’s focus on locations for study over spaces for guests and entertaining dignitaries fits nicely with the villa ideal of pursuing study over secular affairs, and focuses attention on the monastic quality of the space. It also highlights the separation of monastic life from secular affairs and elevates monastic affairs over the royal agenda.

The inscriptions written for the most private monastic rooms of the abbey complex, which also seem to be the rooms that least define the monastic enterprise, the dormitory and the latrine, do the most to describe and instill monastic culture in the inhabitants in the inhabitants of the monastery. The poems that Alcuin composed for these single-purpose rooms do not need to mark off the space in particular – four walls would suffice. Instead in these rooms, Alcuin focuses on the meditation and prayer that accompanies every aspect of the monastic life. Hic, used to carve out a niche or a space in other inscriptions, is unnecessary for these are already well-defined spaces.

Architecture has defined the rooms for the dormitory and the latrine; Alcuin seeks to mold these spaces into areas for meditation and prayer in order to set them apart as monastic. The inscriptions make a monastic imprint on the architecture throughout the monastery; no monastic space remains mundane. The activity of the monastic community separates them from the laypeople who share the space with them. The inscriptions intended for the dormitory and the latrine turn ordinary activities into meditations on the monastic life and fill these activities with monastic purpose. The dormitory inscription offers a reflection on God’s power to sustain and protect him. The dormitory offers rest to the monk who is tired after a long day and weary from his labors, including the extensive liturgy of the day (for which he would be awakened again soon).

The inscription about ascending to ever-higher solaria sets the pace and effort of the 54 liturgy and prayer by using curro, ferveo, and scando. The monk in the poem is fessus, a word that Alcuin uses elsewhere to describe travelers and laborers.39 The poem in the dormitory calms everything and makes the room still and restful – signs, according to

Alcuin, of God’s presence there. Each night, then, a monk can experience a reminder of the rest he works daily to attain – eternal rest in the presence of God.

Alcuin also uses this inscription to emphasize moderation in monastic life. God gives daylight for labor and nighttime for sleep, thus it is right for the monk to maintain this order.40 The fears mentioned in the poem surely include scruples about the comfort and relief of sleep. But the monk should not stay awake through the night as a form of ascesis; he should rest to prepare for the new labors of the next day. Individual ascetic achievement, once a hallmark of monastic discipline in the Early Christian period, did not fit well with the corporate model of monasticism of the Benedictine Rule.41 Nor did it fit with the Carolingian monastic ethics of desire, which sought to use sleep as a symbolic representation of eternal life rather than the abnegation of sleep as a means of bodily discipline against unwanted physical desires.42

39 Alcuin uses fessus in MGH, Poet. I, p. 284, LXV.iv: scriptor fessus; p. 325, XCIX.x: fessus viantus; and p. 343 CX.xviii: fessus vienens viator. This characterization of fatigue and weariness complements Alcuin’s description of the monks’ war on vice. In his De virtutibus et vitiis liber, Alcuin describes the bellum cum vitiis as a battle fought in habitu et in forma corporis, in incessu, in voce, et in opere, in vigiliis, in jejuniis, in oratione, in remotione, in lectione, in scientia, in taciturnitate, in obedientia, in humilitate, in patientiae longanimitate, that is in every aspect of a monk’s life. PL 101, coll. 613C-638D.

40 Cf. MGH, Poet. I, p. 328, C.ii: Ad requiem noctem dederas, lucemque labori, / Prospera conservans famulis noctesque diesque. / Ad te cor vigilet, somnus si claudat ocellos, / Te labor et requies conlaudent omnibus horis.

41 A. J. Kleinclausz, Alcuin, Annales de l'Université de Lyon. Troisième série. Lettres, vol. 15 (Paris, 1948), 179-180, argues that Alcuin favored the Benedictine Rule and hoped to establish it at Tours. The Vita Alcuini, ch. 12-13, provides evidence that Alcuin may not have approved of individuals engaging in ascetic heroics. See MGH, SS, 15.1, 182-197. Benedict of Aniane also liked the Benedictine Rule for its emphasis on moderation, community, and renunciation of self will rather than on individual asceticism.

42 I would argue that it is precisely in this shift in the monastic ethics of desire that we can locate the seed of the bodily experiences of union with God as the culmination of a life in pursuit of the monastic desire for unity that are an important aspect of certain late-medieval spiritualities. See C. W. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336, Lectures on the 55

The latrine provides the occasion for one of the most telling inscriptions of

Alcuin’s Tours collection. The inscription turns the location of, arguably, the most bodily experience of the monks’ day into a moment for meditation about abstemiousness and drawing closer to God. It also moves an individual and interior experience into an opportunity for consideration of the purpose of the communal life. In order to provide this brief summary of the Carolingian monastic hermeneutic of the body on the latrine wall, Alcuin provides a brief reflection, taking into account the location and attendant activities, but ties in a number of elements from the other inscriptions penned for Tours.

Alcuin links this activity to study and learning and unites even this to the purposes of the communal scola; the monk in the latrine is addressed as lector, a reminder for the rest of his day. The poem intends to guide the monk to a sober life in ore. These words echo the second line of the poem (Carm. XCV) about the purpose of the inscriptions: Quisque legens versus per celsa palatia curris, / Semper habeto dei nomen in ore tuo.

The phrase in ore comes from a widely commented upon verse in Proverbs:

Thesaurus desiderabilis requiescit in ore sapientis; vir stultis glutit illlum.43

Carolingian scriptural commentators expanded on the long tradition of commentary on this passage beginning with Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos, which, in the commentary on the text of Ps. 141, connects the repetition found in the Psalms to the passage in Proverbs 21 and ultimately to the chapter of Leviticus that discusses the purity of animals. Leviticus divides animals into clean and unclean based on their status as

history of religions ; new ser., vol. 15 (New York, 1995), particularly her section on thirteenth century spirituality. Unfortunately, due to the lack of attention given the literary works of Carolingian authors, Bynum’s book skips over this period almost entirely.

43 Proverbs 21:20. This is not a reading from the Vulgate, but rather came from the text of the Septuagint, see A. Firey “The Letter of the Law: Carolingian Exegetes and the Old Testament” in With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, ed. J. D. McAuliffe, et al., 204-224. It became a preferred reading for exegetes because Augustine relied heavily on it in his Enarrationes in Psalmos, linking the repetition present in the Psalmist’s opening lines to the act of rumination, and then to the division of clean ruminant animals and unclean non-ruminants found in Leviticus. 56 ruminant and non-ruminant. Augustine links rumination to the acquisition of wisdom via Proverbs 21:20 by likening cogitation of a text to chewing and digesting it.44

Alcuin employs the same meter in this inscription as he used for the two about learning and study, and the one about ascent, rather than the dactylic hexameter he used for the dormitory inscription. The final line of the poem also departs from the dormitory inscription by moving the reader away from the cyclical night and day tempo, to a linear notion of time in which the monk should progress forward. This notion of time appears in the other daytime poems, most notably Carmen XCV, but also the reminder of age in the middle of Carmen XCIII. Here the poem’s linear conception of time encourages the monk to embrace the linear monastic ethic of growth in wisdom directed toward greater union with God instead of traditional monastic ascetic self-denial.

The colorful inscription fosters a sense of communal activity rather than individual ascetic achievement. The poem’s first couplet demands self-consciousness, but the second couplet asks the reader to “flee” from a preoccupation with individual and interior concerns and embrace the textual study of the monastic community, signified by the phrase in ore:

Luxuriam ventris, lector, cognosce vorantis, Putrida qui sentis stercora nare tuo. Ingluviem fugito ventris, quapropter in ore, Tempore sit certo sobria vita tibi.45

Recognize, reader, the extravagance of your greedy belly, You who smell with your nose the rotten dung. Flee from the gluttony of your stomach, so that in your mouth, The sober life will be yours in good time.

44 Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 101-150, ed. F Gori, CSEL 95 (Vienna, 2001-2005), Ps. 141. See also Augustine, Enarrationes underscores the in Psalmos, Ps. 36 & 66, and Augustine, Serm., 149 in Augustine, Essential Sermons, ed. D.E. Doyle, OSA & E. Hill, OP, (Hyde Park, NY, 2007). Later Carolingian commentaries on the Psalms, such as Walafrid Strabo’s, follow Augustine’s and note that repetition is not superfluous because it better commits the repeated prayer to memory and experience: Walafrid Strabo, Glossa Ordinaria Liber Psalmorum, PL 113, col. 1064D.

45 Carm. XCVII. 57

The opening exhortation to the reader to acknowledge his putrida stercora, a symbolic reflection of his flawed desire, his greedy appetite, is in keeping with the longer tradition of monastic ascesis and abstemiousness with regard to food and drink. But Alcuin’s inscription moves the reader quickly from meditation on his interior life and the evidence of his misdirected desires, by urging the monk to flee from his gluttony. Here the poem intends for the reader who has not confronted the evidence of his flaws to put aside any preoccupation with these desires and instead focus on the cultivation of his desire for wisdom and the sobria vita. The second couplet of the poem connects both the inscription intended for a hallway or walkway at Tours, which encourages monastic desire for greater union with God through repetition of pious poetry (Et dum lingua pias resonat per carmina laudes / Ferveat illius pectus amore tuum) and with the significant body of Scriptural commentary that centers on the phrase in ore and the Carolingian monastic reading aesthetic with its focus on the mouth as the locus of textual ruminatio and digestion.46 Notably, it is the third generation of monastic scholars that forcefully return to this monastic ethics of desire. After the periods of close cooperation with the

Carolingian kings and of critique and competition with the aristocracy had given way to further political instability and greater insecurity for monasteries and their holdings, the focus of monastic life and culture became more self-reflexive and more internally defined. This turn has made the most lasting legacy of the Carolingian monastic movement its ethics of desire.47

46 Succeeding generations of Carolingian scholars would continue to place a great deal of emphasis on the phrase in ore and its link to textual study. Walafrid Strabo’s commentary on Psalm 141 contrasts the ruminatio of the wise man with the gluttony of the fool. The specific issue he addresses is, following Augustine’s commentary, David’s repetition of the same or similar lines in the Psalms. He notes that such repetition not only commits the repeated prayer to memory, but also that repetition is, in fact, rumination and cogitation on the text, PL 113, coll. 1064C-D.

47 The Carolingian move away from framing desire as misguided passions and defining desire as a good laid the foundations for the spiritualities emblematic of the later Middle Ages, such as that 58

The poem, in fact the entire round of Alcuin’s inscriptions, requires its monastic context in order to convey meaning. Furthermore, it encourages a mimetic engagement with the text and with the community of monks. The brief poem confronts the monk in a clear representation of the distance between man as he is and man as he should be. This asymmetry drove monastic education. The monk who read the inscription would note the juxtaposition of the phrase in ore with the notion of gluttony (ingluviem) and recall the oft-quoted passage from Proverbs 21. As he read the inscription he experienced the asymmetry between himself and the inscription, his teachers, and the monastic ideal.

The purpose of inscribing the walls of Carolingian monasteries was to link closely the reading aesthetic with the hermeneutic of the body as a vehicle for the pursuit of ordered desire rather than a stumbling block on account of disordered desire in an effort to form the monastic habitus. The method consisted of etching into the walls that mark off the physical world of the monk the very precepts that should delimit and define his mental world and then pointing to elder monks and teachers as the intermediaries and guides to those seeking to correct the asymmetry.

The early Church fathers, and St Augustine in particular, articulated a theory of human progress from God’s creation of man in his own image through man’s disobedience and loss of grace to reform and regaining the divine likeness.48 In what

Carolingian reformers considered the heroic early age of monasticism, the formation model consisted of a disciple placing himself under the tutelage of an experienced elder monk as his master. The novice’s education consisted of the master guiding the disciple in a new way of life and a specifically monastic ordering of virtues and values. The basic

of Bernard of Clairvaux, whose spiritual writings display a celebration of desire and of the monastic body’s ability to experience and symbolize rightly ordered desire.

48 This is a pervasive idea in Augustine’s corpus. It is evident in his description of his own life, in his Confessions, where he places himself under the tutelage of several different masters and finally Ambrose of Milan, and it is articulated in his essay on Christian education, De doctrina Christiana, ed. W.H. Green CSEL 80 (Turnhout, 1963). 59 principle of monastic education was a corrective moral program, the imposition of monastic culture through a mimetic process in which the novice monk saw the asymmetry between himself and his teacher and directed his efforts to molding himself in the image of his master.

Augustine articulated his theory of education in Neo-Platonic terms in his De doctrina Christiana. He described the role of the liberal arts in man’s search for wisdom and knowledge of God, which would ultimately lead to reunion with God, and placed the liberal disciplines at the service of Scriptural study.49 Though Augustine himself both benefited from and advocated a liberal education, he maintained that disciplines such as grammar and rhetoric were best learned, not by direct or specific instruction, but rather by association and the forming of proper habits.50 This idea became a fundament of monastic education; the lived experience of monastic life was the key to a deeper understanding of the meaning of Scripture, a fuller understanding of one’s humanity and closer communion with God, because experience unlocked the meanings of symbol, metaphor and analogy. In Augustine’s articulation, man trained himself so that he could be illumined move beyond the material and see with the eye of the mind rather than with the eye of the body.

The role of Neo-Platonic thought in the formation of educational theory in the

Patristic era and renewed interested in it in the Carolingian period had a profound effect on the formation of the monastic school. Carolingian epistemology held that mankind accrued knowledge or wisdom by finding new meanings, symbols, metaphors, and allegories in the texts they read, particularly in Scripture. Deeper understanding of the

Scriptures elucidated what was previously understood and moved the student (upward) closer to a true understanding of God, and consequently toward a fuller communion with

49 Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, 2.16ff.

50 Augustine, De doctrina Christiana 4.8. 60 him. Everything was building upward toward unity. A number of monastic inscriptions attest to the continual reinforcement of this key aspect of monastic learning. If we return to the poem Alcuin intended for a hallway at St Martin at Tours in which monastic students are encouraged to move from physical reality upward to the spiritual realm, we see the interplay between the physical experience of the monk and his education in monastic virtue.

Dum tu pulchra domus pedibus solaria scandes, Immemor haud esto scandere mente polum. Sol rutilans radiis domibus splendescit in altis, Lumine perpetuo Christus in arce poli. Ut sol illustrat totus praefulgidus orbem, Sic fulgent sancti semper in arce patris. Sunt a sole domus celsae solaria dicta, A Christo sanctum nomen habemus item. Si te delectet manibus habitatio facta, Non manibus factam plus tibi quaere domum.51

As you climb the lovely porches of the house, Do not forget to ascend to heaven in your mind. The sun’s shining rays grow brighter in the higher rooms, Christ shines with perpetual light in the stronghold of heaven. As the sun in all its glory illumines the earth, So do the holy ones shine always in the house of the father. As solaria of the heavenly house are so called because of the sun, We too have a holy name on account of Christ. If the dwellings made by hands are pleasing to you, Seek all the more for yourself the home not made by hands.

The physical movement of monks in the monastery symbolizes their ascent through learning to the heights of wisdom. Alcuin uses imagery of light, the sun, and illumination to describe the movement toward greater knowledge of and communion with God. The sancti in heaven shine brightly and illumine those on earth – the monks.

And just as the reflected brightness of the sun gives the solaria their name, the monks bear the name Christian insofar as they reflect the glory of Christ.

Alcuin’s inscriptions were permanent, ever-present reminders to the inhabitants of the monastery of their distinctive and elevated status. In monasteries throughout the

51 Car. XCV. 61

Carolingian world, ubiquitous inscriptions constantly shaped monastic perceptions of their purpose, their lifestyle, and lived tension of their position of distance from yet engagement with the secular social and political spheres. The placement of these inscriptions on the buildings and structures that marked the monastic separation from the world and the employment of the architectural symbolism of the Roman villa had a profound influence on monastic authors’ understanding of the intersection between literature and architecture. As this study will explore in subsequent chapters,

Carolingian authors had great faith in the power of writing to inscribe meaning on objects, define social relationships, and provide access to secular power. 2 Lyric & the Creation of Carolingian Benedictinism

Little attention has been paid to the Carolingian interest in the Rule of St

Benedict prior to the reign of Louis the Pious; perhaps even less attention has been given to the verse vita of St Benedict that Paul the Deacon wrote while at the court of

Charlemagne in the 780s. Scholarship on the place of the Rule in Carolingian monastic reform focuses on two assemblies in 816-817, where Louis the Pious, the sole surviving son and heir to Charlemagne’s empire, undertook to reform and standardize monastic life throughout Francia.1 These councils decreed that the Rule of Benedict should be the rule for all monastic houses of the empire, and that the Divine Office outlined in

Benedict’s Rule should be uniformly observed. Well before Louis’ councils of 816-17,

Benedictine monasticism received support from the Carolingian rulers, and monastic reform occupied their attention. Pippin III had favored the Benedictine rule for the monasteries that he had brought under royal control as early as 755. Pippin held councils at Ver (755), Verberie (756), Compiègne (757), Attigny, (760-62), and Gentilly (767) at which directives concerning monastic discipline, liturgical practices, and ecclesiastical

1 See for example C. Bonnet and C. Descatoire, Les Carolingiens et l'Eglise: VIIIe-Xe siècle (Paris, 1996); J. Nelson, The Frankish World, 750-900 (London, 1996); R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-987 (New York, 1983); H. Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire: The Age of Charlemagne, trans. P. Munz (New York, 1964); C. de Clercq, La legislation religieuse franque: étude sur les actes de conciles et les capitulaires, les statuts diocesains et les règles monastiques, 2voll. (Louvain, 1936).

62 63 organization were promulgated.2 During Charlemagne’s reign, Paul’s lengthy poem, a reworking of Gregory the Great’s vita of Benedict, added to the interest among the scholars at court in the Benedictine rule and the person of St Benedict as they worked to shape monastic, educational and cultural reforms.3 The poem is contemporary with

Charlemagne’s programmatic treatises on education and monastic reform, chief among them, the Admonitio Generalis (789) and the De litteris colendis (781-791); it also echoes much of the legislation found therein. The poem goes beyond promoting the

Carolingian legislation and the goals it intended to achieve; the hallmarks of monastic life that the poem emphasizes became the key features in the culture of Carolingian

2 A thorough description of Pippin’s monastic policy can be found in McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 53-64. Paul the Deacon’s verse life of St Benedict through line 130 is included in Book I of Paul’s Historia Langobardorum, but has no connection to the rest of the chapter and was certainly composed prior to the writing of the Historia. The chronology of Paul’s life is not well known and scholars have argued for dating the poem to Paul’s time at the Carolingian court or to the several years prior, while Paul was at Monte Cassino. See Paul the Deacon, History of the Langobards, trans. W.D. Foulke, Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History; n.s., vol. 3 (Philadelphia, 1907), xvi-xxviii for a chronology that favors the former timeline and W. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (Princeton, NJ, 1988), 333-347, for an argument for the latter. Two internal aspects of the poem seem to bolster the case for composition during Paul’s stay at the Frankish court: The poem’s repetitive style is the sort of affectation that is common in Carolingian poetry, although it is found in a few other poems in Paul the Deacon’s corpus. Dating the poem to Paul’s stay in Francia would also explain his focus on harsh winter weather in lines 17-18: Frigora, flabra, nives perfers tribus impiger annis; / Tempnis amore Dei frigora, flabra, nives. This description stands in stark contrast to the description of Subiaco as a virtual paradise found in Gregory’s vita. Scholarship on Paul’s literary works is sparse, but there have been several foundational articles: L. Bethmann, “Paulus Diaconus Leben und Schriften,” Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 10 (1851), 247-334; G. Vinay, “Paolo Diacono e la poesia. Nota.” Convivium 1 (1950), 97-113, and more recently, J. Pucci, “Pied Beauty: Paul The Deacon's Poem To Lake Como,” Latomus 58 (1999), 872-884; W. Goffart, “Paul the Deacon's 'Gesta episcoporum Mettensium' and the Early Design of Charlemagne's Succession,” Traditio 42 (1986), 59-93. The studies concerning Paul’s treatment of St Benedict have focused on the Lombard’s account of the translation of Benedict’s bones to Francia: J. Hourlier, “Le témoignage de Paul Diacre,” Studia Monastica 21 (1979), 205-211; W. Goffart, “Le Mans, St. Scholastica, and the Literary Tradition of the Translation of St. Benedict,” Revue Bénédictine 77 (1967), 107-141.

3 The full text of Paul’s poem can be found in the Appendix, beginning on p. 178. The poem opens with ten lines of introductory praise, then switches to a narrative of Benedict’s miracles, recounting the stories found in the thirty eight capitulae of Gregory the Great’s dialogue, in lines 11-126. With a handful of exceptions, each chapter of Gregory’s dialogue occupies a single couplet in Paul’s poem. The poem then closes with another section addressed to St Benedict that varies in length from as few as four lines to as many as 28 in the manuscript tradition. The majority of the manuscripts contain the entire 154 lines of the poem and the 28 lines in the final section. 64 monastic houses and the monastic community at large. Paul’s verse vita of Benedict offered readers a model of monastic life rooted in scholarship and communal living.

Paul’s poem envisions the monk as a student and the abbot as a master and the monastery as a community of scholars. As has been demonstrated in the previous two chapters, this depiction of monastic life dominated Carolingian conceptions of

Benedictine monasticism, and Paul’s poem, along with other monastic literature of the late eighth century, was important in defining the culture of the Carolingian monastery beyond the legislation found in the royal documents. Charlemagne’s interest in monastic reform took on a life of its own under the direction of court scholars familiar with monastic life. It was at the court of Charlemagne, among the monastic scholars that the king himself had gathered, that Carolingian monastic culture took shape. The men that

Charlemagne had gathered came to a community of scholars with the heritage of the monastic traditions of the British Isles, of the Iberian penninsula, of southern Gaul and of Italy. The importance of the court community as well as the monastic roots of the court scholars is evident in the monastic reform movement.

Paul the Deacon, a monk from Monte Cassino, a scholar, and a one-time courtier at the Beneventan court, arrived at Charlemagne’s court after having struck up a correspondence with Charlemagne’s secretary in an effort to secure the release of his brother who had been captured during the Frankish conquest of the Lombards. He was drawn to the court circle and the like-minded individuals that Charlemagne had gathered. Charlemagne called upon Paul to help with one of his earliest initiatives in the reform effort – a homilary for the Frankish clergy, to ensure correct preaching and teaching throughout the kingdom.4 As a monk and a ‘true believer,’ Paul was concerned about his role in furthering Charlemagne’s political ambitions, but found himself drawn

4 Cf. J. B. Mullinger, The Schools of Charles the Great and the Restoration of Education in the Ninth Century (London, 1877), 101. 65 to the king and to his learned circle almost in spite of himself. Paul came to court hoping to be part of a Christian renewal, but was wary of his life as a court scholar, which he knew was quite different than the monastic life to which he had promised to adhere.

In his response to a poem that Peter of Pisa wrote commending him for his work within the court circle, Paul expresses his concerns about his role there. Paul does not beat around the bush; he opens the poem by assuring Charlemagne that he fully understands the king’s purpose in inviting him to court: Sensi, cuius verba cepi exarata paginis.5 And he makes it clear that he is not seeking glory for his learning. Paul goes on to say that his affection for Charlemagne is the sole anchor that keeps him at court.6 He assures the king (and the court scholars) that he is unmoved by the praises they heap upon him. He protests the praises lavished upon him for his learning and expresses the hope that his work teaching at the court will bring about moral reform.7 He also comes down strongly against the veneration of pagan authors, likening them to dogs and asking not to be compared to them.8

In this sentiment, Paul expresses the odd nature of the monastic anxiety of influence. He pays homage to his Christian, particularly Patristic forebears by swearing off the praises of the world lavished upon pagan authors. But his anxious disavowal of the Roman tradition does not match his copious borrowing from Roman literature in his own writings. As this chapter will show, Paul employed these allusions and imitations in contexts that turn the ancient meaning on its head or reveal a Christian, and a particularly monastic, understanding of a particular genre, phrase, word, or idea.

5 K.P. Harrington, ed., Medieval Latin, 2nd ed., rev. J. Pucci (Chicago, 1997), 213-15.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid. 66

Paul is comfortable alluding to the works of classical pagan authors. Paul, moreover, is quite willing to employ phrases from classical works and infuse them with new, Christian meaning. In his couplet from his verse vita of Benedict describing how the youthful Benedict conquered his sexual appetite, Paul quotes from Ovid’s Ars amatoria: Ignis ab igne perit, lacerant dum viscera sentes; / Carneus aethereo ignis ab igne perit.9 Ovid used ignis ab igne to advise young men that if they are looking for women at dinner parties they should be advised that wine and firelight make women seem more desirable to them while also inflaming their passions and bolstering their courage. Paul turns the meaning of Ovid’s phrase on its head, noting that the fire of

Benedict’s self-inflicted penance quenched the fire of his passions. Herein lies the genius of Paul’s classical echo: with one phrase, he gives the Ovidian phrase a Christian meaning and offers to the reader an allusion that only those educated, presumably, in a monastic school can identify.

The Ovidian echo is part of Paul’s larger effort to create within the monasteries a received tradition and culture. The monastery was the heir to the learning of classical

Rome and the guardian of that tradition. Paul’s derives his classical allusions for the most part from Augustan poets – Vergil, Ovid, and Propertius. These allusions taken together with his reply to Peter of Pisa suggest that Paul’s work contains a commentary on, or perhaps an exploration of, Charlemagne’s patronage of learning and his own role at the court.

Paul’s poem expresses his hope that Charlemagne’s political efforts will lead to the expansion of Western Christendom, but he seems wary of being brought to court as an ornament to enhance royal prestige. In a letter home to Theudemar, the abbot of

Monte Cassino, Paul reveals ambivalence again:

9 Lines 27-28; Cf. Ovid, Ars Amat., 1.244. 67

Inter catholicos et Christianis cultibus deditos versor: bene me omnes accipiunt, benigniter mihi affatim amore nostri Patris Benedicti et vestris meritis exhibetur; sed ad comparationem vestri coenobii mihi palatium carcer est, ad collationem tantae quae apud vos est quietis hic mihi degere tempestas est.10

I am engaged here among devout Catholics and with reverent Christians, all of whom receive me warmly, and abundant kindness is shown me on your account and for the love of our father Benedict; but in comparison with your monastery, the palace is a prison to me, in comparison to the great peace among your brothers, here is living in a tempest for me.

He goes on to describe some of the daily activities of the monastery, and then writes that he is delayed at court solo me aspectu misericordiae, solis pietatis visceribus, solis animarum hic profectibus ad tempus.11

The tension between Paul’s discomfort with his life at court on the one hand, and his interest in Charlemagne’s reform efforts on the other suffuses his writing. In his

History of the Lombards, written upon his return to Italy after his acquaintance with the

Carolingian court, he interwove the history of his own people with the history of the

Romans and the Franks, in order to create connections between these peoples as heirs to the western, Christian tradition.12 It is a strikingly balanced work by a man whose people were conquered and whose family endured such hardship at the hands of the conqueror.

Paul’s account of the Pippin III’s deposition of the Merovingians is the Carolingian party line:

10 PL, v. 95, col. 1590-1592.

11 Ibid.

12 On Paul’s History, see J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Barbarian West, 400-1000, 5th rev. ed. (Oxford, 1985); C. Wickham, Early Medieval Italy: Central Power and Local Society, 400-1000 (London, 1981); E. Sestan, “La Storiografia dell’Italia Langobardia: Paolo diacono,” La storiografia altomedievale: 10-16 aprile 1969, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo, vol. 17 (Spoleto, 1970), 357-96; M. L. W. Laistner, Thought and letters in western Europe, A.D. 500 to 900, New ed. (London, 1957); and P. S. Leicht, "Paolo Diacono e gli altri scrittori delle vicende d’Italia nell’età carolingia," Atti del secondo congresso internazionale di studio sull'alto medioevo 1951 (Spoleto, 1953). 68

Hoc tempore apud Gallias Francorum regibus a solita fortitudine et scientia degenerantibus, hi qui majores domus regalis esse videbantur administrare regni potentiam, et quidquid regibus agere mos est, coeperunt, quippe cum coelitus esset dispositum ad horum progeniem Francorum transvehi regnum.13

At that time in Gallia, since the customary courage and intelligence of the Frankish kings was deteriorating, and those men who were mayors of the palace were seen to be kingly and to administer royal power, and they began to do those tasks commonly considered kingly, and indeed, since heaven had ordained that the kingship of the Franks be given over to their family line.

Paul treats the Franks favorably in his account because he had come to admire the

Carolingian model of kingship during his time at Charlemagne’s court and hoped to encourage the Lombards to see things his way. He emphasizes cooperation between the

Lombards and the Franks prior to the 774 conquest, and portrays that event as a political shift rather than a military conquest. Charlemagne rightfully replaced the Lombard king in much the same way his father had replaced the Merovingian king.14 Paul sought to join the Lombard past to the Frankish present as part of the cooperative progress of history. The verse vita of Benedict that he wrote while at court similarly aims to include the Italian father of monasticism in Frankish monastic history by refocusing Benedict’s miracles to elaborate upon Carolingian reform goals.

The Carolingian documents that addressed educational reform aimed at creating a minimum standard of learning and literacy for the clergy and religious – priests, bishops, monks and abbots – so that they could reform the laity. The royal effort latched on to the learning, scholarship, and literary production already being cultivated in monasteries. Monastic learning, however, was not directed toward pastoral care; knowledge was a means of striving for greater human perfection and drawing closer to

13 Historia Langobardorum, 6.16.

14 See R. McKitterick, “Paul the Deacon and the Franks” Early Medieval Europe 8 (1999), 319-39, at 328-31. 69

God. Scholars in the monasteries and at court welcomed the royal patronage that came with the educational reforms, but in their own writings, they preserve the monastic focus on learning as primarily a means of coming to know God; a minimal knowledge would not do. The capitularies promoted the Rule of Benedict to curb abuses and ensure stable monasteries from which learning and culture could be disseminated. Monastic thinkers emphasized Benedict’s monastic journey toward God through humility, obedience, study, and prayer.

In his poem on the life of Benedict, Paul highlights precisely these monastic aspects of Benedict’s life and Rule. He is masterful in his use of every aspect of the poem to convey meaning to the reader. The literal meaning of the poem is cloaked and quite useless to the untutored reader. But to the careful and well-trained reader, the poem’s genre, its meter, the repetition employed, the allusions, and the miracles included and those left out, all say a great deal more than the sum of the words on the page. Unlike

Gregory the Great’s prose vita, which was accessible to a wide audience, Paul reserved understanding of his poem for an elite group of educated, predominately monastic, readers. The poem eliminates the more pastoral themes found in Gregory’s Dialogue, particularly Benedict’s constant efforts to instruct and admonish, by words and miracles, everyone he encountered. Gregory the Great’s Dialogue on the life of St Benedict tries to mollify the strictures of the Rule by describing events in Benedict’s own life where circumstances dictated that the Rule be bent or broken. Paul the Deacon’s poem constructs an image of Benedict as an authoritative figure and a silent master.

In its reinterpretation of the founder’s life, Paul’s poem promotes eighth-century

Frankish monastic ideals and shapes the Benedictine monasticism of the Carolingian renewal. The poem implicitly proposes that students be brought into the monastic milieu to be educated, not that monastic education be adapted for the laity. It demands that a reader pour over the text and probe its meaning in order to gain an understanding 70 of it. Paul relies on the structure and rules of language and grammar to reveal meaning to a reader who strives to analyze the logic of his structural and syntactic choices.15

Paul’s poem is a tool for study and meditation; it is not suited for a style of teaching that relies on questions and answers being exchanged between master and student.

The elegy that Paul wrote is not an easy read. Paul’s reader has to approach the poem with a prior knowledge of the literary canon; he must know Gregory’s Dialogues well enough to understand the stories to which Paul’s couplets refer and he needs wider reading in classical texts in order to identify and understand certain allusions. He must be familiar with the elegiac genre and meter so that he can appreciate the reasons for

Paul’s choice of genre and the meaning of the shift from dialogue to elegy. Where the disciple learns through questioning and dialogue with the master in Gregory’s paradigm, in the Carolingian model he learns by wrestling with a text through close reading. In

Paul’s work, the authority that resides in the text, an authority that is derived from the source of the text, either divine inspiration, or the antiquity or learnedness of the author, goes unquestioned and the reader is alone with the text. It is the student’s experience with the text that teaches him.

In order to appreciate the meaning of Paul’s poem the monk had to read more than just the text in front of him. He had to read this reworking of the saint’s life in light of Gregory the Great’s prose vita, the established literary canon to which the poem at times alludes, and the instruction of the grammarians on poetics and meter. Paul follows

Gregory the Great’s prose vita chapter by chapter, and presumes his audience to be

15 J. Chailley, "Ut queant laxis" et les origines de la gamme in Acta Musicologica 56 (1984), 48- 69 notes that Paul the Deacon’s hymn in praise of John the Baptist displays what Chailley calls «des indices de sa propension à ce genre de jeux.» Chailley continues, «Ses homélies témoignent de son goût pour l’allégorie, la recherche des énigmes, le symbolisme saisonnier et son corollaire du cycle vie/mort.» He also notes the lyrical quality of Paul’s repetition of the halflines in the couplets of his poem in praise of St Benedict, see pp. 51-52. 71 familiar with the sixth-century text.16 Portions of Paul’s vita do not fully explain or contextualize a given event and require prior knowledge of Gregory’s version in order to be understood. Unlike Gregory’s narrative vita, Paul’s poem does not indicate to the reader Benedict’s age or adequately provide a chronology for the reader to follow the saint’s maturation and growth in holiness. Paul often boils down to a single couplet an event that Gregory describes more fully. A reader for example, would need to have read

Gregory’s version of the life in order to know that Benedict’s rolling in a briar patch was intended to cure himself of adolescent sexual passions, because the poem focuses more on metaphorical parallels than on how the event fit into Benedict’s personal growth. Paul is not much interested in exploring the saint’s development as a guide to holiness, but rather in offering a mimetic text through which a monastic reader could see the asymmetry between himself and the holy man; the elegy begins with the author addressing Benedict and asking “where do I even begin enumerating your triumphs?” and then proceeds to catalogue the saint’s miracles.17

In composing a verse vita for Benedict, Paul the Deacon rethinks Gregory’s choice of the dialogue between a student and a teacher as the genre for his prose vita.

16 The late eighth and early ninth century saw a number of hagiographic revisions, owing to both political and cultural changes after 751. On the rewriting and revision of hagiographical texts see S. Vanderputten, "'Literate Memory' and Social Reassessment in Tenth-Century Monasticism," Mediaevistik 17 (2004) and A.-M. Helvétius, Abbayes, évêques et laïques: une politique du pouvoir en Hainaut au Moyen Age (VIIe-XIe siècle) (Brussels, 1994). Vanderputten, 74-75, notes that these efforts to retool monastic historical identity sought to use texts to engender a new spiritual and social identity. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 280, similarly describes this occurrence.

17 The opening line of the poem: Ordiar unde tuos, o sacer Benedicte, triumphos? recalls Cicero, Pro Sex. Roscius, 30: quid primum querar aut unde potissimum, iudices, ordiar aut quod aut a quibus auxilium petam? At this point in Cicero’s oration, he has outlined the case and turns to the judges asking how mostly effectively to begin his defense of Sextus Roscius. Paul’s poem is likewise an oration, a monologue, addressed to Benedict as the judge of its merit. Paul’s poem about Lake Como similarly begins Ordiar unde tuas: see J. Pucci, Pied Beauty: Paul The Deacon's Poem To Lake Como in Latomus 58 (1999), 872-884. The phrase is not uncommon among medieval monastic authors; Bernard of Cluny uses it in his brilliantly constructed twelfth- century poem calling for reform in the Church, De contemptu mundi. A fair number of Renaissance Latin authors repeat this phrase, most notably the opening line of Petrarch, De otio religioso, which begins: Unde vero nunc ordiar, seu quid primum semiabsens dicam, quod nisi as totus praesens dicere uolui, illud nempe daviticum, “Vacate et videte.” 72

Paul’s poem is an elegy, that is, a genre associated with praise, funerary laments, and love poetry. The love elegies of Ovid would have been Paul’s primary exposure to the form.18 Although elegy was used for exhortations and giving advice, particularly to troops headed into battle, it was not used for straightforward didactic works. Paul’s shift from the unmistakably didactic dialogue form to the elegy tells his reader that his poem is above all a work in praise of St Benedict’s holy life. The reader can be edified by the poem, but the primary purpose of recording the saint’s deeds and miracles is to honor the saint. In its opening line, the poem is addressed to the saint himself, not to the reader.

The reader of the elegy praises the subject along with the author. The reader of the dialogue learns along with the questioning student; the authorial voice and the teacher’s voice are identified with each other. Peter, the student in Gregory’s dialogue, can ask for explanation of a phrase or story. This allows Gregory to highlight the meaning underlying miracles performed, to introduce tangents to the narrative that discuss the discipline of monastic life, and to clarify Benedict’s behavior. Peter sometimes opens these discussions by questioning the actions or words that Gregory attributes to the saint, leading to long apologetic excursus voiced by Gregory. Paul suppresses Gregory’s loquacious and inquisitive disciple and the contents of his portions of the dialogue, because he did not suit the Carolingian monastic ideal.19 In the praise

18 On the medieval reception of Ovid’s corpus see: R. J. Hexter, Ovid and Medieval Schooling. Studies in Medieval School Commentaries on Ovid's Ars Amatoria, Epistulae ex Ponto and Epistulae Heroidum (Munich, 1986); A. Moss, Ovid in Renaissance France: A Survey of the Latin Editions of Ovid and Commentaries Printed in France before 1600 (London, 1982); J. McGregor, "Ovid at School: From the Ninth to the Fifteenth Century," Classical Folia 32 (1976), 29-51; D. Robathan, “Ovid in the Middle Ages,” in J. W. Binns, Ovid (London, 1973), 191-209; E. H. Alton and D. E. W. Wormell, "Ovid in the Mediaeval Schoolroom," Hermathena 94-95 (1960- 61) reprinted in W. S. Anderson, ed., Ovid: The Classical Heritage (New York, 1995), 23-36.

19 Peter is such a chatterbox that even Gregory has to silence him in order to finish the account of Benedict’s life and miracles: At the end of chapter 13, Peter jumps in with a comment likening Benedict to the prophet Elisha and Gregory responds, Oportet, Petre, ut interim sileas, quatenus adhuc maiora cognoscas. 73 elegy, the holy man’s life stands unquestioned and authoritative, though the reader can still learn from Benedict’s example, which is beyond questioning. The Rule of St Benedict repeatedly stresses the importance of example as a means of teaching in monastic life, noting that abbots should live so that they may be an example to their monks, that deans and priors should be chosen based on their virtue, and that monks should always strive to emulate the heroism of the Desert Fathers.20 Paul’s decision to write an elegy highlights the saint’s ability to teach silently by his actions, which affirm the precepts of the Rule.

Paul goes even further than this affirmation of monastic values; he writes a poem that is, in essence, set off from the secular world. Paul creates a text of a saint’s life that undermines the assumed purpose for hagiography – it cannot be received aurally by an audience; it is not aimed at promoting the cult of a saint to a wider public. Paul’s poem is structurally so devoid of the ordinary hagiographic conventions, that the text is removed from the public sphere entirely.21 Gregory’s choice to write his life of Benedict as a dialogue was itself a departure from hagiographic convention. A dialogic text progresses through the exchange of two contrasting viewpoints; by its very nature, it

20 In an early ninth century commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, attributed to Paul the Deacon, Pauli Warnefridi, Diaconi Casinensis, in sanctam Regulam commentarium, (Monte Cassino, 1880), 58, the commentator expounds upon the Rule’s instruction that the abbot must teach by deed first and foremost, and also by word: Beatus ergo Benedictus, quia cognouit utrumque esse necessariusm, idest doctrinam quae in uerbis fit, et doctrinam quae in operibus, idcirco dixit duplici doctrina, idest doctrina quae fit in uerbis, et doctrina quae in operibus. Sequitur: Idest omnia bona et sancta factis amplius quam uerbis ostendat. Nunc animaduertendum est, quare praemisit omnia, cum dixit bona et sancta. Ideo dixit omnia, cum nihil excludit. Debet enim hoc eligere Abba, non quod ipse uoluerit , sed quod in diuinis Scripturis repererit, secundum auctoritatem diuinarum Scripturarum.. The commentator attributes the authority of the abbot to the blamelessness of his actions, in which he is guided by the authority of Scripture. All authority derives from Scripture. The commentator quotes Gregory the Great in his expositio concerning the Divine Office: nullatenus docuit sanctus Vir aliter quam uixit. The commentator instructs that more weight be given to bonam uitam than to sapientiam when choosing a dean or prior for a monastery.

21 The introductions to the following two collections of translated hagiographies provide excellent overviews of the textual conventions of the genre. P. Fouracre and R. A. Gerberding, Late Merovingian France: History and Hagiography, 640-720, Manchester Medieval Sources Series (New York, 1996) and T. F. X. Noble and T. Head, Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saint's Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 1995). 74 admits to more than one possibility, even if only to ultimately discard the inferior one.

M. Corti notes that in medieval semiotics the dialogic genres – dialogue, certamen, conflictus, debat – were used to create and consecrate cultural structures by contrasting opposing ideals.22 The lyric genre of Paul’s text operated as a foil to the content, which anticipates an entirely different genre and audience. The modus dicendi of the poem lies in variations from the tradition of genre and content; the reader must consider the author’s intended purpose in pairing the hagiographic content with an elegiac form.

The catalogue of miracles in the verse vita makes plain the authority the saint commands, and by extension the authority that his text – his Rule – commands. In the first two accounts of miracles that occupy more than a single couplet, Paul focuses on the power of Benedict’s commands (iussa). The first sequence describes a scene from

Gregory’s seventh chapter in which a monk under Benedict’s rule finds himself able to walk on water in order to save a drowning boy. Paul chooses iussa paterna gerens as the repeated halfline in the opening couplet. He describes the water acting as a road prompto ad praecepta magistri and the monk who ran across the lake as a cursor ignarus, thereby emphasizing the abbot’s command as the cause of the miracle.23 Paul follows this by revising of Gregory’s eighth chapter to make it a story about the abbot’s authority, though Gregory intended it to be a warning against the sin of envy.24 Paul devotes three couplets to the narrative, with the first couplet introducing the man whose heart is full of evil impulses and will try to poison Benedict, the second recounting the miracle of the raven carrying off the poisoned bread, and the third telling the reader that

22 M. Corti, "Models and Antimodels in Medieval Culture," New Literary History 10.2 (1979).

23 Lines 37-40. The monk does not so much walk on water, as the water turns into a road, drawing a distinction between the unknowing monk and the apostle Peter, who realized he was walking on water at Jesus command (cf. Mt. 14:22-33).

24 Gregory uses inuidia or inuideo four times and aemulor once while describing the jealous priest. 75

Benedict was sad when the man who wished him evil had died, and his own disciples had rejoiced at the death. The second couplet notes that the raven who brought Benedict food took the poisonous meal away at the holy man’s command: Fert alimenta corax digitis oblata benignis; / Dira procul iussus fert alimenta corax (lines 45-46). The next miracle to which Paul devotes more than a single couplet comes from chapter 23 of

Gregory’s work. Paul recounts the story of two women religious whom Benedict rebuked for gossiping and who had died without receiving reconciliation in two couplets, both of which repeat the half line vocis ad imperium.

Vocis ad imperium tempnunt dare frena loquelis; E bustis fugiunt vocis ad imperium. Vocis ad imperium sacris non esse sinuntur; Intersunt sacris vocis ad imperium.25

At the command of his voice they disdain to curb their speech; They take flight from their grave at the command of his voice. At the command of his voice holy burial are not permitted them; They are given holy burial at the command of his voice.

The second couplet shows Benedict commanding first the excommunication of the women and then their reconciliation with equal effectiveness. Gregory’s vita of Benedict has Peter question how this is possible, noting that Benedict seems to be doing the impossible in pardoning the women after their death. The challenge allows Gregory to give a short excursus on the Incarnation of Christ and the mercy of God (though he does not directly answer Peter’s question). Paul lets the contradiction stand as a testament to

Benedict’s unquestioned authority. Both commands are concise and the couplet’s terseness leads the reader to understand they were promptly carried out.

Authority rather than doctrine or curriculum was the focus of the Carolingian monastic educational program. It is noteworthy that in Carolingian doctrinal disputes and similar cases, the master often devotes as much verbiage to the student’s

25 Lines 77-80. Note also that Paul grammatically subordinates vox to imperium, telling his reader that authority precedes speech, which follows the Rule’s instruction on silence, discussed below. 76 disobedience and disrespect for his teacher as he does to arguing his point in the dispute.26 Charlemagne himself concentrated on attracting preeminent foreign and domestic scholars to his court circle and appointed learned abbots to key monasteries. It was Charlemagne’s patronage of scholarship, rather than his legislation that drove the cultural and educational ferment in the monasteries; the achievement of Carolingian monastic scholars went far beyond learning the Psalter, the chants and songs necessary for the Office, and the computus – the goals outlined in the royal capitularies. The court and the monastic schools’ scholars would teach their disciples by means of their way of life and their own scholarship. Much like the disciples of early hermits, the disciples of these scholars were instructed by the example of their master. Teaching in the

Carolingian monastery required the presence of an authoritative master rather than a specific curriculum. Students acknowledged their debt to their masters and traced their intellectual lineage back to pay homage to prior masters and scholars, and to provide a chain of authority from which theirs was derived.27

The most striking difference between Paul’s Benedict and Gregory’s reveals a fundamental difference between the Carolingian notion of a monastic teacher and

Gregory’s earlier depiction. In Gregory’s dialogue, Benedict speaks to teach his disciples

(recounted in direct discourse), particularly when his authority or his actions are questioned, but in Paul’s poem, the Benedict, the master and abbot, is never heard.28

26 In Alcuin, Carm. 32, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Poetae 1, 250, Alcuin laments and admonishes a student who has strayed from the discpline he had learned from his teacher. P.J.E. Kershaw, “Eberhard of Friuli, A Carolingian Lay Intellectual,” in P. Wormald and J.L. Nelson, eds., Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2007), 77-105 describes the letters that Hrabanus wrote concerning the errors in the theological teachings of his former student Gottschalk regarding a double predestination. Like Alcuin, Hrabanus monastic practice to correct theological study, and Gottschalk, by his lapsing from the former, had inevitably strayed from the latter as well.

27 See “Learning in the Middle Ages” in J. J. Contreni, Carolingian Learning, Masters and Manuscripts (Brookfield, VT, 1992).

28 C. Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection (Berkeley, CA, 1988), esp. ch. 3 and R.A. Markus, Gregory the Great and His World (Cambridge, 1997), 68-75, have noted that the 77

Gregory has monks directly challenge Benedict in a story about building a monastery.29

Benedict assigns some monks to a build a monastery and leaves them, promising to return and give further instructions on how the buildings should be arranged. He then appears to two monks in a dream and provides a detailed description of the layout he wants. The monks, however, fail to build according to these instructions and wait for

Benedict to return. When he does not arrive, they go to get him and say, Exspectavimus,

Pater, ut venires sicut promiseras, et nobis ostenderes ubi quid aedificare deberemus, et non venisti.30 Gregory then has Benedict explain himself fully:

Quare, fratres, quare ista dicitis? Nunquid sicut promisi, non veni? Cui cum ipsi dicerent: Quando venisti? respondit: Nunquid utrisque vobis dormientibus non apparui, et loca singula designavi? Ite, et sicut per visionem audistis, omne habitaculum monasterii ita construite.31

By Gregory’s account, questioning the abbot Benedict is acceptable and opens the door to teachable moments. Paul’s couplets, on the other hand, focus on the miracle itself and do not include any questioning of Benedict’s authority. In Paul’s account, the miracles affirm the abbot’s authority, but do not explain or elucidate anything to those who witness it: Pectora cuncta stupent, quod eras sine corpore praesens; / Quod per visa monens, pectora cuncta stupent.32 The repeated halfline emphasizes the astonishment

events of Gregory’s own life, as well as the pastoral duties that he found himself continually called upon to fulfill, inform his construction of Benedict’s life; Gregory’s intention in writing his Dialogues was to offer a basic and appealing primer in monastic life to the many new converts to monastic life in the sixth century. Each miracle story in the Dialogue provides a lesson for the reader, and most of the lessons are focused on the basic principles of communal life: obedience to the superior; the importance of communal ownership and renunciation of private property; the dangers of wandering about outside the monastery; and finally the centrality of chastity and humility to monastic life.

29 Gregory the Great, VSB, ch. 22.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Paul the Deacon, Versus, lines 75-76. 78 of the men to whom Benedict appeared, rather than their misunderstanding and doubting of the vision.

Perhaps even more unsavory in Paul the Deacon’s mind would have been

Gregory’s use of direct discourse when people within the story question, challenge, or ask favors of Benedict. The exchanges follow a pattern of doubting monks questioning

Benedict and Benedict performing a miracle to assure them of his authority. One such instance occurs in chapter 5 of the Dialogue. Here, Gregory describes how some of the monks at one of Benedict’s monasteries found climbing up and down the mountain to fetch water dangerous and asked Benedict to move his monastery:

Tunc collecti fratres ex eisdem tribus monasteriis, ad Dei famulum Benedictum venerunt, dicentes: Laboriosum nobis est propter aquam quotidie usque ad lacum descendere, et idcirco necesse est ex eodem loco monasteria mutari.33

The brothers’ bold request is underscored by Gregory’s use of direct discourse. Benedict must in turn effect a miracle to prove that he had not chosen a bad site for the monastery and that it did not have to be moved. In his account of the miracle, Paul focuses on how

Benedict’s ability to produce miracles teaches the monks in his care: Unda perennis aquae nativo e marmore manat, / Arida corda rigat unda perennis aquae.34 He uses unda perennis aquae as the repeated half line – a phrase that the monastic student will surely recognize from his lessons. The repeated half line echoes Propertius, Elegies, 3.5, making an allusion that offers an interesting commentary on the genre of elegy as well as providing comparisons to monastic life.35 Propertius 3.5 describes the poet’s devotion to

33 Gregory the Great, VSB, ch. 5.

34 Paul the Deacon, Versus, lines 33-34.

35 The themes of Propertius’ Book 3 fit nicely with monastic notion that the wisdom of age tempers the passions of youth. Propertius, in particular, may have been a poet with whom Paul could identify; both were wary of placing their work at the service of glorifying state and ruler. (Propertius reiterates his inability to write poetry for Augustus and the state throughout his four books of elegies, notably at 2.1 and 3.9, both addressed to Maecenas, who was, if not his literary 79 the pursuit of erotic love in almost ascetic terms.36 He has disavowed the worldly pursuits of wealth and influence and instead has dedicated himself to love.37 He says that men dedicated to love cannot be soldiers. The poem is divided in the middle, at line

22, with the first half describing how his early life is led in pursuit of love and the second half telling the reader that once he becomes too old for love, he will seek the answers to questions of nature through philosophy. The poem is key to the third book, during which Propertius undergoes a conversion from the lust of youth to the thoughtfulness of adulthood.38

In addition to pointing to themes from classical poetry, Paul’s choice of elegy as his genre silences the challenges and questions of Benedict’s disciples. According to the

Rule of St Benedict, silence is a fundamental monastic virtue. Chapter 6 of the Rule stresses the importance of silence as the first virtue: Nam loqui et docere magistrum

patron, an admirer and supporter who was also close to Augustus.) Propertius 3.3 confronts the questions of genre and its role in defining the intent of a particular poem. The poem opens with Propertius intending to write epic poetry glorifying the history of Rome, but he is stopped by Apollo, who appears to him and tells him his gift and his duty is love poetry.

36 Propertius, Elegies 3.5: nec mihi mille iugis Campania pinguis aratur, / nec bibit e gemma divite nostra sitis, / nec tamen inviso pectus mihi carpitur auro, / nec mixta aera paro clade, Corinthe, tua... atque ubi iam Venerem gravis interceperit aetas, / sparserit et nigras alba senecta comas, / tum mihi naturae libeat perdiscere mores, / quis deus hanc mundi temperet arte domum, / qua venit exoriens, qua deficit, unde coactis / cornibus in plenum menstrua luna redit, / unde salo superant venti, quid flamine captet / Eurus, et in nubes unde perennis aqua (2-6, 23-30). Paul’s allusions to classical poetry seem to give the reader a subtle commentary on chastity and monastic life. See also Ovid, Remedia amoris, 651: Sed meliore fide paulatim extinguitur ignis / Quam subito; lente desine, tutus eris. / Flumine perpetuo torrens solet altior ire: / Sed tamen haec brevis est, illa perennis aqua, in which Ovid advises his reader that love for a woman cannot be quashed overnight, but must fade gradually.

37 The warnings against chasing wealth and power abound in Book 3. See Propertius 3.7, 3.13, and 3.18.

38 The poems move away from the topic of love in Book 3. The early poems focus on the art of poetry. In 3.9, Propertius writes Maecenas addressing again the question of whether or not he should write poetry at the service of Augustus. In 3.24, he looks back at his obsession with love and declares it to be finished, using the image of being bound and scalded: correptus saeuo Veneris torrebar aeno; / vinctus eram uersas in mea terga manus. / ...nunc demum uasto fessi resipiscimus aestu, uulneraque ad sanum nunc coiere mea (24.13-14, 17-18). 80 condecet, tacere et audire discipulum convenit. The 9th through 11th steps of humility, explained in the Rule, center on silence:

Nonus humilitatis gradus est si linguam ad loquendum prohibeat monachus et, taciturnitatem habens, usque ad interrogationem non loquatur, monstrante scriptura quia in multiloquio non effugitur peccatum, et quia vir linguosus non dirigitur super terram. Decimus humilitatis gradus est si non sit facilis ac promptus in risu, quia scriptum est: Stultus in risu exaltat vocem suam. Undecimus humilitatis gradus est si, cum loquitur monachus, leniter et sine risu, humiliter cum gravitate vel pauca verba et rationabilia loquatur, et non sit clamosus in voce, sicut scriptum est: Sapiens verbis innotescit paucis.

The ninth step of humility is achieved when a monk practicing silence, only speaks when asked a question, for ”In many words you shall not avoid sin” (Prov. 10:19). And “A talkative man shall not prosper upon the earth” (Ps. 140:11). The tenth step of humility is reached when a man restrains himself from laughter and frivolity, for “The fool lifts his voice in laughter” (Eccles. 21:23). The eleventh step of humility is arrived at when a monk speaks gently, without jests, simply, seriously, tersely, rationally and softly. “A wise man is known my few words” (Prov. 10:14).39

Paul recounts Benedict’s deeds, but not his words. Miracles happen at his command, but the reader, the disciple, never hears the iussa or the imperium vocis, because the words that he used were not so important as the miracles he performed.

Benedict is portrayed as a teacher in Gregory’s vita through the explanations he speaks to his monks; he is a teacher in Paul’s poem by virtue of his holiness and authority. Because learnedness was the source of authority in the Carolingian monastery, Paul does not mention Benedict’s quitting school, a point that Gregory emphasizes for his reader.40 Paul tells us that Benedict spurned the wealth of Rome

39 RSB, ch. 7. Translation from The Rule of St. Benedict, translated with introduction and notes, A. Meisel and M.L. del Mastro (New York, 1975), 60-61.

40 Gregory makes this the main point of the preface, ending the section by describing Benedict as scienter nescius et sapienter indoctus. Gregory then dates Benedict’s first miracle in terms of his 81

(sprevit opes Romae), not his studies, as Gregory’s dialogue indicates (Despectis itaque litterarum studiis).41 The Psalter was most important part of the literary canon for the eighth-century monk, and Paul’s poem recognizes this. According to Gregory, Benedict, knowing he was about to die, had the brothers carry him into the chapel so he could receive Communion in preparation for death. Paul’s poem says that Benedict chanted the Psalms when he was near death: Psalmicen assiduus numquam dabat otia plectro; /

Sacra canens obiit psalmicen assiduus.42 Benedict’s death is accompanied by reading.

This couplet follows one in which Paul tells us that Benedict’s life as much as his Rule is a guide for monks.43 The Carolingian teacher, like Benedict and the abbot or prior described in the Rule, derives his authority from his virtuous life, which is based on the prescriptions and examples found in Scripture and Patristic sources. The teacher’s authority thus stands largely unquestioned, as it is based in the same texts that he opens up for his students.

The change in genre and the attendant differences in the form of the life reflect the change in monastic education and monastic culture that had occurred in Europe between the sixth century and eighth centuries; both education and monastic culture had become more hierarchically structured and deeply rooted in authority derived from mastery of the written word.44 Carolingian monastic thinkers wanted to draw a greater contrast between the monastic life of scholarship and the monastery cum school that had

abandonment of his studies: Hic itaque cum jam relictis litterarum studiis petere deserta decrevisset (c.1).

41 Paul the Deacon, Versus, line 10; cf. to Gregory the Great, VSB, preface.

42 Versus, lines 119-120.

43 Paul repeats this notion in the hymn he composed for Benedict: Haec inter instar nectaris / Miranda plectro claruit. /Nam pinxit apte lineam / Vitae sacrae sequacibus. He uses pingo to describe Benedict’s composing the Rule – he did more than write the Rule, he illustrated it by his own life.

44 Contreni, Carolingian Learning, Masters and Manuscripts. 82 become a reality of Gallo-Roman and Frankish monasticism from the fifth century onward. Monasteries prior to the Carolingian period did not have external schools and were the only formal educational institutions of for monks, secular clergy and the aristocratic laity alike. As the Carolingian reforms sought to reintroduce and reinforce the discipline and the uniqueness of the monastic experience, monastics began to emphasize the religious and ascetic aspects of monastic scholarship and education.45 The

Carolingian rulers recruited monastic advisors and court scholars and, consequently, this allowed the men at court whose work shaped the educational reforms to address their own concerns about the content and discipline of monastic education. Monastic reformers made hallmarks of regular and communal life, such as authority, obedience, silence and submission the basis of Carolingian education. The reformers also sought to separate, for the first time, the school for the lay aristocracy from the monastic school.46

The external schools could focus on achieving a workable level of Latin literacy and an understanding of Christianity that would further promote a feeling of Frankish cultural unity. Within the walls of Carolingian monastery, the master taught primarily by his own exemplary behavior and scholarship the discipline of monastic life and learning.

Paul the Deacon’s poem depicted an exemplary master in Benedict and required learning that included the classical literary tradition, Scripture, and Patristic scholarship.

Paul’s poem is meticulously constructed, with the initial half line of the hexameter repeated as the second half of the pentameter line. The order of every couplet and the matching half lines imitate the regularity and circularity of monastic daily life.

45 See the introduction in A. Diem, Das monastiche Experiment. Die Rolle der Keuschheit bei der Entstehung des westlichen Klosterwesens, Vita Regularis, Abhandlungen 24 (Münster, 2005); N. Cantor, “The Crisis of Western Monasticism, 1050-1130,” AHR 66 (1960), 47-67, cites the ascetic withdrawal and regular discipline of monastic education as “too limiting in its interests and too restricted in its organization” (53) for non-monastics by the 11th century, and argues that these aspects of monastic education provided an impetus for the rise of non-monastic schools.

46 Cf. M. M. Hildebrandt, The External School in Carolingian Society, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1992), 50-57. 83

This regularity echoes the Rule of St Benedict and injects Gregory’s narrative of miracles, which is variable in both content and form, with a strict pattern and regular cadence.

Carolingian commentators on the Benedictine Rule seem particularly interested in time and in properly ordering the monastic day. Their writings reveal their concern to make sure daily activities occur at the correct hours, accounting for the changing seasons and for the lengthening and shortening of days throughout the year.47 The daily schedule, with its emphasis on the liturgical duties, kept the community together for much of the day. Carolingian monastic prescriptions concerning study and reading moved these activities out of private cells or the dormitory and into places where the monks would be together and could be overseen by the abbot or another monk.48 This meant that even time between the hours of the office was spent in communal settings and dedicated to specific activities such as study, manual labor, and prayer. This circular and regular conception of time in the monastery helped foster communal regularity and check individualistic asceticism.

Paul’s poem connects this circularity and regularity with renewal. Paul borrows the form for his couplets from scattered verses in Ovid, but he writes his entire poem with this repetitive pattern. In between one third and one half of the couplets, the first and second half lines of the pentameter are metrically identical. This heightens the cadence of the poem, making it so regular that the lines that contain spondees jolt the reader out of his rhythm and slow his momentum.49 In addition to the tempo that the repeated half line imparts on the poem, it also provides Paul with an opportunity to play

47 M. A. Schroll, Benedictine Monasticism as Reflected in the Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentaries on the Rule (New York, 1941), 107-31.

48 See D.G.M., «La journée du moine, d’après la règle et la tradition bénédictines» Revue Bénédictine 6 (1889), 398-401.

49 Classical elegists deliberately avoided matching the half lines of the pentameter. See M. Platnauer, Latin Elegiac Verse: A Study of the Metrical Usages of Tibullus, Propertius & Ovid (Cambridge, 1951). 84 with the repetition. In the couplet that retells the story of Benedict repairing a bowl for his nurse, Paul couples the repetition with two pairs of opposites that balance the two lines: Vas pedagoga tulit diremptum pectore tristi; / laeta reformatum vas pedagoga tulit (11-12). He frequently uses opposing pairs of adjectives to invert the meaning of the half line. In this particular case, the inversion would have been poignant, since the most common Ovidian epanalepsis, or clausal repetition, repeats the word that ends the hexameter line at the beginning of the pentameter line.50 Thus the reader confronts the opposite of the hexameter’s adjective precisely where he might have found the word repeated.51 In lines 15-16, abdita becomes cognita (Laudibus antra sonant mortalibus abdita cunctis; / Cognita, Christe, tibi laudibus antra sonant), and the praise with which the caves resounded goes from the echoes of Benedict’s own voice to the praises of men who have come to see the holy man. At Benedict’s command, the earth that had ejected a corpse (propellit) holds it (tenet).52 Paul uses the circularity of the couplets and the opposing adjectives in order to make the reader feel the circularity and renewal that monastic discipline brings. The renewal in the couplets comes when the circular structure reveals an unexpected turn that resolves the problem. The repetition of the monastic daily schedule could similarly lead the monk to a deeper understanding of his studies and a more profound knowledge of God, an encounter that turned the wisdom of the world on its head. The poem emphasizes both regularity and rectitude in its very structure. In each couplet the repetition of the half line makes the couplet come full circle as the story the couplet tells is put aright.

50 Ibid., 34-35.

51 Compare to Fraudis amice puer, suado captaris ab ydro; / Ydro non caperis, fraudis amice puer (69-70); and Ah lacrimande senex, hostilis concidis ictu; / Ictu sed resipis, ah lacrimande senex (97-8). In these lines, Paul still uses pairs of opposites – captaris ab ydro is juxtaposed with ydro non caperis and concidis is paired with resipis.

52 Lines 81-2. 85

Carolingian monks understood reform and renewal to be at the heart of

Benedictine monastic life. In the Carolingian commentary on the Rule, the author describes the first of Benedict’s four types of monks, the cenobites, by comparing their communal life to that of the Apostles of the early Church. The commentator notes that when the early Church coepit tepescere due to concessions that the Apostles granted to

Gentile converts and the infirm in the community, some of the more devout members of the community left the community and ibant in suburbana et secretiora loca, et prout recordabantur ea quae Apostoli docuerant, exercebant.53 This exposition makes clear that cenobitism is the most ancient form of Christian monasticism and focuses on both the importance of reform and the role of monasticism as an agent of renewal, thus echoing the intentions of Carolingian monastic policy. Paul’s poem structurally reflects the same notion of reform, and shows that the reform comes from observing the regular life. Reform efforts can come from outside, but renewal occurs when the patterns and cycles of prayer and work found in the Rule are continuously observed.

In order to highlight the reform themes of stability, obedience, and humility, Paul connects individual events within his poem by means of word repetition between couplets. In lines 63-64, he prophesies that Rome will not be destroyed ab hoste but rather by internal discord. In the couplet that immediately follows Paul recounts a miracle whereby Benedict frees a deacon from the possession of a demon but warns the liberated man that he will be punished by hoste gravi if he ever tries to exercise a priestly function. Although in Gregory’s text, the prophecy about the fall of Rome refers to

Totila, the Gothic king, as the enemy who will not take Rome, Paul wants to have his readers see only one enemy – the devil and his temptations – in both stories. In lines

66-67, Paul says that monasteries will be given over to pagans, who upon their conversion would restore the monasteries to their former glory. By means of these three

53 Schroll, Warnefrid-Hildemar Commentary on ch. 1. 86 stories, Paul warns his monastic audience against temptations to attainments in the world outside the monastery, to aspiring unduly to holy orders, and notes that reform can come from without as well as within the monastery – all of which would have resonated with an eighth-century Frankish monk. In making the point about the impetus for reform coming from outside the monastery, Paul acknowledges that reform coming from the king and a cadre of foreign-born scholars, and that deprives noblemen of properties and offices they had grown accustomed to holding would meet resistance.54

The Carolingians had taken monasteries formerly under the control of lay nobles or attached to bishoprics and brought them directly under royal control, appointing a loyal abbot and protecting the assets of the house from being diverted away from it. In this way, the Carolingians had checked the power of nobles and bishops and installed abbots as counterweights to their influence. Monastic reform aimed at encouraging these royal appointees – and training future generations of monks – to fully embrace their vocation and maintain their loyalty to the king. Paul’s poem encourages his monastic reader to embrace the regular life and leave off any secular ambitions; in doing so, the monk will contribute to the increased rectitude and stability, not only of his own life, but that of the secular world as well.

Paul returns to a second-person address to the reader for the next two couplets:

Fraudis amice puer, suado captaris ab ydro; Ydro non caperis, fraudis amice puer. Mens tumefacta, sile, tacita et ne carpe videntem; Cuncta patent vati; mens tumefacta, sile.55

Young man, friend of deceit, tempted by the serpent, you will be taken in But you are not seized by the serpent, young man, friend of deceit. Be silent, mind puffed up with pride, hold your tongue and do not gripe about the man who sees you;

54 It also points up Paul’s thesis of a cooperative history for the peoples of western Europe, which was fleshed out in his Historia Langobardorum. See R. McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), 60-83.

55 Lines 69-72. 87

All things are known to the abbot; be silent, mind puffed up with pride.

He repeats ydro as he warns against temptation and then offers in the following couplet a word about submission to authority. In order to join the two stories to which these couplets refer, Paul skips a miracle from Gregory’s account about a monk who hid a gift from a community of nuns only to have Benedict discover it.56

Omitting the miracle contained in Gregory’s chapter nineteen enables Paul to connect the monk’s ability to avoid the snares of the devil with his humble submission to his master. It also points to a shift in focus between Gregory’s and Paul’s texts.

Gregory’s text focuses here on the problem of private property in the monastery. Paul is unconcerned with this and eliminates one of the stories and shifts the focus to the spiritual battle against temptation that the monk must endure. He also injects the issue of authority into Gregory’s warning against pride, noting that cuncta patent vati.57 Thus the monk should avoid griping about his master, to whom Paul refers as videntem. The couplet is addressed to the reader in the second person so the reader can identify the authority that Benedict commands with that of his own master and abbot. Paul takes care throughout his poem to ensure that he makes the miracles performed by the historical figure of St Benedict immediate to his reader. By pulling the miracles that

Benedict performed into the reader’s present and retelling certain miracles in the second person, Paul also contracts the time and space that might distance the monastic reader

56 Gregory’s chapter 18, which corresponds to Paul’s lines 69-70 tells the story of Exhilaratus who was sent to deliver two flasks of wine to Gregory and tried to hide one. Benedict knew he had kept one flask and warned him against drinking from it because there was a snake inside. Gregory’s chapter 20, Paul’s lines 71-72, tells how Benedict chastised a monk who was the son of a Roman official (defensoris filius) because he, in a spirit of pride, asked himself why he should have to serve Benedict. The omitted chapter, 19, tells how monks whom Benedict sent out to preach tried to hide gifts they had received from him, but Benedict discovered them.

57 Early medieval usage of vates expanded to include saints, perhaps because of their ability to effect miracles, and then further expanded to refer to bishops and abbots by virtue of their purported authority and holiness. 88 from his sixth-century forebears, demanding that the reader see himself as the individuals in the story.

Paul chose to write his narrative without explicitly delineating past and present, a tactic more easily and commonly applied to poetic genres than prose ones. Gregory’s vita is peppered with references to time; he often begins recounting a miraculous event with “quadam die,” alio tempore,” or “quodam tempore.” The dialogic intrusions into the narrative highlight the fact that the events Gregory retells happened in the past.

Several times in the dialogue, Peter asks Gregory to return to his narrative, and these moments create distance between the reader’s present and Benedict’s life.58 Paul’s verse vita, on the other hand, employs no adverbs or adverbial phrases that indicate time.

Paul’s decision not to mark time stands in stark contrast to medieval conventions; many medieval authors took great care in measuring and recording chronology in their writing.

There were often multiple ways to measure time for a single date, and an author’s choice of how he marked time could provide a clue as to his opinion or perspective about the events he was recounting.59 Paul moved fluidly between verb tenses as well, using the historical present to contract the distance between the past and the reader’s present:

Ignis ab igne perit, lacerant dum viscera sentes; Carneus aethereo ignis ab igne perit. Pestis iniqua latens procul est deprensa sagaci; Non tulit arma crucis pestis iniqua latens. Lenia flagra vagam sistunt moderamine mentem; Excludunt pestem lenia flagra vagam.60

58 For example, at the end of a digression concerning the correlation of age and sexual desire in men, Peter agrees with Gregory and then says, sed quia prolati testimonii claustra reserasti, quaeso ut de vita justi debeas ea quae sunt inchoata, percurrere. After another long digression, Peter again affirms Gregory’s explanation and asks him to return to his recounting Benedict’s life: Ita esse ut doces, et manifesta ratio, et prolatum congruum testimonium declarat. Sed quaeso ut de vita tanti Patris ad narrationis ordinem redeas. These requests also serve to remind the reader that the teacher and his pupil were recounting a story and that their dialogue takes place in the reader’s present, but Benedict’s life is firmly in the past.

59 See R.D. Ware, “Medieval Chronology: Theory and Practice” in Medieval Studies, ed. J.M. Powell (Syracuse, NY, 1976), 213-38.

60 Lines 27-32. Propertius often mixed verb tenses and moods as well: See B.K. Gold, “Time Poetry, and Immortality in Propertius (“Propertius” 1.8), The Classical Journal 81 (1985), 148-57. 89

Fire perishes by fire, while thorns tear the flesh; The bodily succumbs to the spiritual; fire perishes by fire. The dangerous poison lying hidden, is detected from afar by the wise man; It cannot bear the sign of the cross, the dangerous poison lying hidden. By gentle scourges the wandering mind is calmed and guided; Kept at bay by gentle scourges are wandering dangers.

In addition to changing verb tenses, Paul plays with the chronology expected within the poem. In the above-quoted lines, the reader knows that the first of the three couplets refers to an event in Benedict’s youth. The next couplet describes him as sagax, an adjective associated with age and great learning, not youth.61 Similarly, he addresses the reader as parve puer in lines 41-42, but as lacrimande senex in lines 97-98.62

The Rule instructs that distinctions based on age should be avoided when choosing an abbot, prior, or dean, and that all brothers regardless of age or seniority should be consulted when the abbot has an important matter to discuss. In the context of the Carolingian reforms, these directives became more significant; the king could appoint an abbot from elsewhere to reform a community, for example. The most able administrators and the most learned monks were likely those who had had the benefit of monastic education since childhood. This meant that younger monks increasingly would come to hold abbacies and other positions of influence. Intelligence and ability bred

61 Bede uses it to describe Paulinus of York (HE, 2.9). Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, mixes Greek and Latin in order to make the section of the letter more difficult to decipher, but expresses his confidence that Atticus, who is sagacius, will sniff out the intended meaning. See Cicero, Letters, 6.4.2. In his Remedia Amoris, Ovid employs the same form of the adjective found in Paul’s poem in a passage where suggests that manual labor can exhaust a man and consequently quash his sexual desires: Vel tu venandi studium cole: saepe recessit Turpiter a Phoebi victa sorore Venus. Nunc leporem pronum catulo sectare sagaci, Nunc tua frondosis retia tende iugis, Aut pavidos terre varia formidine cervos, Aut cadat adversa cuspide fossus aper. Nocte fatigatum somnus, non cura puellae, Excipit et pingui membra quiete levat. (199-206)

62 In both cases, Paul’s use of the second person requires the reader to adopt the meditative persona of a character within the narrative of the miracle. For more on how Paul shifts the person in which he writes and changes the meditative persona of the reader, see below. 90 ambition, and Paul’s poem demands that the reader deny his uniqueness and see himself as the man with leprous skin (89-90), the old man possessed by a demon (97-98), and the deceitful cellarer (93-94), and recognize his own shortcomings in the couplets addressed to him.

The notion of self that Paul promotes in the poem follows closely the ideals for suppressing the individual will and subordinating the individual to the community that

Benedict emphasized in his Rule. Gregory’s dialogue, by contrast, intended to soften the

Rule’s self-abasement. From the beginning of the work, Gregory highlights Benedict’s independence, noting that after he was sent to Rome (Romae liberalibus litterarum studiis traditus fuerat), he chose to leave his studies and withdraw from the world

(Despectis itaque litterarum studiis, relicta domo rebusque patris, soli Deo placere desiderans, sanctae conversationis habitum quaesivit). Later on, desiring greater solitude, Benedict ran away from his nurse (nutricem suam occulte fugiens) and went to

Subiaco. Gregory’s narrative attributes Benedict’s becoming a monk to his inclination toward independence. This portrait of the heroic anchorite is opposite the depiction of the ideal monk – humble, obedient, and integrated into the community – that Benedict gives us in his Rule.

Gregory’s emphasis on the individual goes beyond his depiction of Benedict; throughout the dialogue, Gregory takes care to name the people involved in the various miracles. He gives us the names of his four sources for Benedict’s life and miracles – the monks Constantine, Valentinian, Simplicius, and Honoratus – as well as the names of upwards of twenty other people in the text.63 Paul, by contrast, suppresses all names in

63 Gregory carefully names the individuals involved in each event or miracle. Some of the references are to relatively minor personalities in the narrative: Totila, king of the Goths, wanted to test Benedict’s ability to prophesy so he dressed up one of his guards, Riggo by name, as king and sent him to Benedict with three attendants so he looked more convincingly like the king. (In cuius obsequio tres qui sibi prae caeteris adhaerere consueverant, comites misit, scilicet, Uult, Ruderic, et Blidin, ut ante servi Dei oculos ipsum regem Totilam esse simulantes, eius lateribus obambularent). Gregory even names the three attendants individually. 91 his poem, referring only to Benedict himself by name once in the opening line. Paul also shifts from recounting in the third person, to addressing the meditative persona of the reader in the second person, to addressing Benedict in the second person, thus making the reader speak through the poem. The poet deliberately does not treat the reader as an unique, individual addressee; the meditative persona that the poem requires the reader to adopt is one of self-denial. In fact, the “you” of Paul’s poem is not a personal “you” addressed to the actual reader, but an impersonal “you” that requires the actual reader to recognize that he must adopt the persona of an unspecific ideal reader.64 This tactic constructs the meditative persona as a suppression of the individual; it implies a notion of self as interchangeable rather than unique. The author includes himself as much as the reader in this denial of self. The ideal reader constructed in the poem is indistinguishable from the author of the poem (hence the portions addressed to

Benedict) and from the actual reader of the poem (hence the variety of the portions addressed to the reader).

The monk who is reading the poem is engaged in a social activity as he studies, and Paul’s poem reminds him that even though he is alone with the text, his reading and interpretation are part of a larger cultural institution. Paul does not intend for the text to adapt to the interpretation of an individual reader; instead, he demands that the reader deny his individuality in favor of his role as a monk. The more fully the monk is able to achieve this, the more the reader’s experience of the text will match the experience of the monk who wrote it. Readers and writers trusted language to convey true meaning, and the communal life of the monastery bridged the gap between author and reader by demanding that they not distinguish themselves from one another.

64 In this sense, Paul must have seen Gregory’s use of Peter as a specified interlocutor as even more an affirmation of the individual student or monk, and he employs the means afforded to him by the lyric genre to suppress the individual. 92

Paul’s shifts in address remind the monk that there is a community of monks. All are engaged in the same prayers, the same labors and all follow the same rule. In the

Carolingian commentary on the Rule, the author, in his discussion of Benedict’s image of

Jacob’s Ladder as representing the steps of humility, writes, Iste Iacob tenet figuram

Monachorum. The usually personalized figura is here incongruously paired with a plural genitive – the face or form of all monks is one figura. He goes on to note that obedience and humility are inextricably linked, even for those monks qui pro necessitate sunt in Monasterio. So long as the monk has even one small inclination in the right direction, non sunt desperandi. This first step is the monk’s recognition that he too should strive to be the figura Monachorum, an ideal monk.

Gregory provides his reader with a particularly interesting account of an exception to the rules of monastic life in his story of Benedict’s sister, Scholastica, and

Paul’s rewriting of the passage mutes Gregory’s intended point. In Gregory’s text,

Benedict goes to visit his sister just beyond the monastery walls and when he tries to leave at night fall, she asks him to remain. He declines her request and says that it is not possible for him to stay outside the monastery overnight. Scholastica bows her head to pray and a violent storm begins all of a sudden. Gregory then recounts the following conversation between brother and sister:

Tunc vir Dei inter coruscos et tonitruos atque ingentis pluviae inundationem videns se ad monasterium non posse remeare, coepit conqueri contristatus, dicens: Parcat tibi omnipotens Deus, soror; quid est quod fecisti? Cui illa respondit: Ecce te rogavi, et audiri me noluisti; rogavi Dominum meum, et audivit me. Modo ergo si potes, egredere, et me dimissa ad monasterium recede. Ipse autem exire extra tectum non valens, qui remanere sponte noluit, in loco mansit invitus. Sicque factum est ut totam noctem pervigilem ducerent, atque per sacra spiritalis vitae colloquia sese vicaria relatione satiarent. 93

Gregory makes a point of noting that Scholastica did not subjugate her will to that of the venerable abbot, but rather appealed to a higher power when he refused her. Benedict would have to stay the night against his will, a point Gregory repeats later for the reader

(Qua de re dixi eum voluisse aliquid, sed minime potuisse) just for good measure. He explains her success by arguing that Scholastica desired this so much that her will was not to be refused:

Nec mirum quod plus illo femina, quae diu fratrem videre cupiebat, in eodem tempore valuit: quia enim juxta Joannis vocem, Deus charitas est, justo valde judicio illa plus potuit, quae amplius amavit.

Paul shifts the focus somewhat in the couplet he composes: Omnia vincit amor; vicit soror imbre beatum; / Somnus abest oculis; omnia vincit amor (105-6). He chooses love as the subject of vincit in the repeated half-line, relegating Benedict’s sister to the interior portion of the couplet. He is sure to mention, in the small space he devotes to the incident, that Benedict did not sleep outside the monastery, but that he kept vigil all night. Here again, Paul’s choice of genre makes a difference; Gregory recalls the conversation between Benedict and Scholastica in direct discourse, but Paul tries to eliminate the dialogue and the challenge to Benedict’s authority by boiling the incident down to a single couplet.

Paul’s commentary on the event is developed further in the repeated halfline of the couplet, omnia vincit amor, which echoes a line from Vergil: omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori. The line comes from the Tenth Eclogue, which recounts the words of Gallus the poet, who is dying of love for Lycoris. The poem has Gallus, love-sick in

Arcadia, setting himself to the task of retooling his elegiac poetry to include pastoral elements: Ibo, et, Chalcidico quae sunt mihi condita versu / carmina, pastoris Siclui modulabor auena (50-51). Gallus seeks to leave the genre of elegy in order to free himself from the role of the suffering lover to which the genre constrains him. Omnia 94 vincit amor appears in the poem as Gallus gives up on his efforts and returns to elegy.65

Paul’s use of Vergil’s wording here calls attention to his own efforts to change the genre of the vita of Benedict and to the fact that Scholastica’s miracle does not quite fit with his intentions. Paul’s allusion seems to wryly suggest that just as the bucolic cannot unmake

Gallus’ role as the suffering lover, muting Scholastica does not fully suppress her challenge to Benedict’s unquestioned authority.

Paul’s verse vita of Benedict shapes the goals of the Carolingian monastic renewal for a monastic audience. He focuses and elaborates on those portions of the royal documents regarding monastic reform that relate to the internal life of the monastery, and he adapts the life of Benedict for a Carolingian monastic audience. As his poem competed with (and depended upon) Gregory’s dialogue as the main narrative of

Benedict’s life, it had several advantages inside the Carolingian monastery. The half line repetitions, coupled with the cadence they produced, made the poem easy to memorize.

Many of the half lines are remembered after a single reading. The half line can bring to mind the miracle that the specific couplet recounted, and, often, it serves as the crux of the couplet’s lesson: omnia vincit amor; ignis ab igne perit; vocis ad imperium; mens tumefacta, sile. Paul ends the poem with 26 lines asking for Benedict’s intercession.

The lines ask Benedict to guide the reader to heaven, addressing him as caelestis tramitis index (130). Paul’s choice of genre enables him to write this section both as a guide to living a holy life as much as a prayer to Benedict to sustain the reader in holiness. For example, Paul writes Guttura claude lupi semper lacerare parati; / Ne male me rapiat, guttura claude lupi. / Cor labiumque meum fac laudent cuncta creantem; / Christum habeant semper cor labiumque meum (141-44). As the monastic reader prays these lines, he reads a summary of monastic virtues for which he should strive.

65 Vergil, Ec. X, 62-69. 95

Paul highlights this parallelism between Benedict’s life and his Rule because

Gregory’s text attempted to use Benedict’s life to modify the Rule. Gregory, in order to create a hero, emphasized Benedict’s independence where the Rule asked for submission of the will. He highlighted individuals where the Rule sought to deny the self. Paul’s effort to ‘update’ the vita and Rule of Benedict for an eighth-century Frankish audience reveals how closely linked the authority of the Benedictine Rule was to the figure of

Benedict and how the vita of a saint established that authority. Paul’s vita aligns the events of Benedict’s life with his Rule and emphasizes submission of the individual will, and the importance of the monastic fortress in the spiritual battle a monk must wage. As

Benedict had in his Rule, Paul uses military metaphors throughout the poem. The sign of the Cross he calls arma crucis (30). In the couplet that corresponds to Gregory’s chapter on the writing of the Rule, Paul calls Benedict dux bonus and says that he warned his charges of wars and was the first to take up arms in battle (115-16). The two texts together affirm the authority with which both speak and with which Benedict speaks to Carolingian monks.

Paul wrote his poem not merely to encourage monks to embrace the Carolingian reform efforts, but to fully embrace Benedictine monasticism. As a monk hoping to promote widespread reform and renewal, Paul tried to inspire zeal for learning, cultivation of monastic obedience and humility, and a Benedictine sense of self-denial.

The Carolingian monastic achievement far outstripped the goals set by the royal capitularies. The Carolingian royal documents hoped that an initiative to broadly implement a basic education for clergy would lead to a basic Christianization of society.66

Paul’s poem and the literary works of other Carolingian monastic scholars connected internal monastic reform with, not a basic literacy and catechesis, but a life dedicated to

66 G. Glauche, Schullektüre im Mittelalter: Entstehung und Wandlungen des Lektürekanons bis 1200 nach den Quellen dargestellt in Münchner Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance- Forschung 5 (1970). 96 scholarship, study, reading and writing. Charlemagne’s court scholars and the abbots and bishops that he appointed were to form their disciples into loyal supporters of the

Carolingian king. But monks also felt themselves set apart by their education and their communal life and much of their literary output and poetry sought to impress upon the monks a sense that they were set apart from the laity, in particular, courtiers and the lay aristocracy. Subsequent generations of Carolingian monks would pick up this theme and further emphasize importance of the monastic community – the monastic community as a whole and not just the monks of his particular monastery – over a monk’s (former) familial and political ties. 3 The Architecture of Scripture

The canon tables of early medieval display Bibles are invariably situated in an architectural frame. This long-standing and geographically widespread decorative convention is illustrative of the early medieval notion that litteratura and scriptura were structures; they were architecture.1 The acquisition of grammar and the knowledge gained through literary studies were steps by which the student ascended to greater wisdom. Wisdom had built a house, hewn out of the seven pillars of the liberal arts, and the seven gifts of wisdom offered by the Holy Spirit. Alcuin opens the first dialogue of his

Grammatica with the image of grammar as the first step toward the student’s ascent to the heights of wisdom. Later on in the dialogue between a master and his students, the master invokes the image, taken from Proverbs 9:1, of the house that Wisdom built:

MAGISTER. Legimus, Salomone dicente, per quem ipsa se cecinit [Sapientia]: Sapientia aedificavit sibi domum, excidit columnas septem. Quae sententia licet ad divinam pertineat sapientiam, quae sibi in utero virginali domum, id est corpus, aedificavit, hanc et septem donis sancti Spiritus confirmavit: vel Ecclesiam,

1 The relationship between architecture and text from antiquity into the Middle Ages is revealing. Manuscript illuminations imitated architectural conventions to signify the structural parallel between textual and architectural composition and then textual conventions were incorporated into architecture as the symbolism (signa) in texts became reified. The pattern of this interplay is as follows: the plane of existence, the world of res, offers structures and aspects that can receive symbolic meaning in the realm of signa. When the relationship between the object and its symbolic value is formalized, the symbol is reified and additional signa can be applied to the ‘new’ object. M. Corti, "Models and Antimodels in Medieval Culture," New Literary History 10.2 (1979), 339-344, applies this pattern to medieval societal structures.

97 98

quae est domus Dei, eisdem donis illuminavit; tamen sapientia liberalium litterarum septem columnis confirmatur; nec aliter ad perfectam quemlibet deducit scientiam, nisi his septem columnis vel etiam gradibus exaltetur.2

Let us read what Solomon, through whom Wisdom sang about herself, said: Wisdom built herself a house, cut from seven pillars. But this sentence pertains to Divine wisdom, who built himself a house, that is his body, in a virginal womb, and strengthened these seven [pillars] by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. That is the Church, which is the house of God, illuminated these gifts; however wisdom is strengthened by the seven columns of the liberal arts; and in no other way is anyone led to perfect knowledge unless he be elevated by these seven columns and by these seven steps.

The monastic scholars of the early Middle Ages relied on language, correctly written and properly read, to convey truth and, in so doing, expose the foundations of wisdom and move the student closer to an understanding of God.3

The architectural structures that decorated the pages of medieval manuscripts reveal several important aspects of the monastic literary model. Texts, like buildings were constructed from materials such as letters, syllables, words, phrases, allusions and sounds that conveyed to the reader both their purpose and meaning. M. Carruthers

2 PL v.101, coll. 853 B-C. Architectural mnemonics were commonplace in education since antiquity. Cicero details a method, which he attributes to the Hellenistic poet Simonides, for creating in the mind an architectural space to aid in memorizing speeches in Book 2 of his De Oratore. The first-century BC textbook Rhetorica ad Herennium also details a architectural mnemonic. For a summary of the techniques of architectural mnemonics and a history of its use, see M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 10 (Cambridge, 1990), 18-54 and 89-99. In the Middle Ages, the notion of a mental structure to aid memory began to influence architecture, particularly the planning and decorating of monasteries and churches, and the sorts of structures that ancient texts had deemed to be best suited for memory work – colonnades, recesses, archways, for example – became more regular features of these buildings.

3 In his Grammatica, Alcuin writes that God gives the steps toward wisdom to men and that students are led up the steps by their teacher until they themselves are able to see the light of truth (PL v. 101, coll. 853C-854A). Monastic scholars of the Carolingian age had already begun to accord a more exalted status to the written word than the spoken word. See M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, England 1066-1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1993), R. McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge, 1989), and M. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: 'grammatica' and literary theory, 350-1100, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, vol. 19 (Cambridge, 1994) for scholarship on the development of textual culture in medieval Europe, and particularly J. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, 3rd ed. (New York, 1982) on the importance of monasticism to the development of literary culture. 99 notes that the medieval methods of reading and study, particularly those which had

Scripture at their foundation created in the mind of the reader a “memorative web” or

“mental fabric” that linked ideas in an aggregate fashion.4 Medieval reading methodology thus prized, not the repetition of memorized texts, but the retelling of a text with its aggregation of knowledge included. In a telling metaphor, Carruthers likens this process to wall building.5 Medieval monastic authors thought of texts as architecture, and not only constructed them as such, but relied on the layout and formation of a text to signify multiple meanings, utilized allusion in their work in a way that parallels architectural employment of spolia, and even grafted text onto architecture in order to influence the reception of the material structure.

The first, basic lessons of grammar prepared monastic students to think of language as a construction from smaller building blocks that lent themselves to the formation of a text but also possessed meaning in themselves. Because language in

Carolingian pedagogy was built from the smallest units upward, to convey the fullest meaning of the underlying truth, the smaller pieces were at an author’s disposal to signify in ways beyond their situation in the text as a whole. The idiom of architecture provided a means of understanding the process of writing. A text was itself a structure that accrued layers of meaning and signa as it was constructed. Such a notion of the structure of language and text had at its foundation the certainty that the building blocks conveyed objective and eternally true meanings. This was particularly important for the study of Scripture, toward which all monastic education was aimed, because Scripture was the eternal and true Word of God.

4 M. Carruthers, "The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle Ages," New Literary History 24.4, Papers from the Commonwealth Center for Literary and Cultural Change (1993), 881-904, at 892.

5 Ibid. 100

At stake in the reading and understanding of Scripture was the knowledge of

God, so education concerning the structure and formation of text was of the utmost importance. Monastic education aimed at providing its students with a framework for correct interpretation of texts, and the framework relied heavily on the science (scientia) of grammar. Grammar began with the building blocks of language, letters. The beginning of Alcuin’s grammatical treatise is a methodical survey of how language is structured. By working from individual letters to syllables, to words, then to parts of speech and to the construction of clauses and sentences, Alcuin presents language as something that is constructed from components that have definite functions and thus are intelligible.6 He chooses to build from the smallest component part upward to the resulting text, noting that each piece signifies in itself and thus points to the foundational inventio or idea, of the text. By teaching this grammatica, Alcuin offers a model for reading and interpretation that examines the construction of a text rather than demanding a deconstruction. Discovering the meaning begins with understanding the foundations, and representation and symbolism in the text builds upward from the building blocks. A commentary on meaning was, therefore, an addition to the existing text rather than a picking apart of it.

Littera est pars minima vocis articulatae, Alcuin tells his students, and among letters, there are consonants and vowels, as well as semi-vocalics and mutes.7 Even these smallest parts of language already can begin to reveal to the disciples a deeper truth about the structure of God’s creation. Alcuin explains that [v]ocales sunt sicut animae, consonantes sicut corpora. Anima vero et se movet et corpus. Corpus vero immobile est

6 C.W. Jones, “Towards a Carolingian Aesthetic: Why Modular Verse?,” Viator 6 (1975), 309-340, at 310-15, esp. 314, notes that the Carolingian literary aesthetic, like the Carolingian architectural aesthetic favored a module, often something numerical and concrete, as a means of imposing order and structure on a text, and conveying meaning via the text through symbolism.

7 PL 101, col. 855A. 101 sine anima. Sic sunt consonantes sine vocalibus.8 The different roles of consonants and vowels in animating language provided not only the literal meaning conveyed by intelligible combinations of the letters, but also a symbolic representation of the order of the human person. In the smallest division of language Alcuin found exegetical interpretation could reveal basic truths.9 In providing his students with this symbolic interpretation, he signaled to them that the discipline of grammatica concerned itself with not only the literal meanings of the text, but also the polysemous signs that language and all its components could convey through sound, placement, meter, and so on.

Alcuin’s treatise on grammatica sought to unite the disciplines of dialectic and grammar more closely than the classical tradition had done in order to posit at the outset of literary study that the meanings of various components of a text were a unity and together constituted the true meaning of the work.10 Language was divinely enabled to signify truth, argues Alcuin, because the first way in which things existed was in the word of God: Primo, quod in verbi Dei dispensatione omnia aeterna sunt.11 Creation existed in its names before the material had been formed. Names were the first creation. In his

8 PL 101, col. 855B.

9 Corti, "Models and Antimodels in Medieval Culture," 344-45, notes that “each time there appears in a culture an ideology or a program which is in any measure deviant, a conflicting semiotic reaction is triggered off within the society between the “different,” which requires new structuring models, i.e. new semiotic structures, and what has already been codified.” In order to gain a foothold, the new model must appeal to a basic, eternal truth at the level of signa, in this case, God’s creation of man in his own image, in order to be consecrated at the level of the res. S. Vanderputten, “‘Literate Memory’ and Social Reassessment in Tenth-Century Monasticism” Mediaevistik 17 (2004), 65-94, at 70-71 notes that “the fact that literacy was mostly familiar to society because of its use in a religious context was instrumental in its success outside that sphere.”

10 See H. de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis I: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. M. Sebanc (Grand Rapids, MI, 1998), 24-40 for a summary of medieval understandings of the multiple meanings of Scripture and their unity, an idea that, de Lubac argues, “derived its foundations from the multiplicity of senses offered by a Scriptural text that could never be directly comprehended in all its depths.

11 Alcuin, Interrogationes et responsiones in Genesin, PL 100, col. 519A. 102 dialogue on grammar he notes that nouns signify in different ways, and drawing from

Donatus and Priscian he enumerates the different types of nouns, proper and common, and their different significations, a substance, a quality, or a quantity. Then he notes that nouns could also signify relational truths: Dicendo enim filium et servum, patrem significamus et dominum.12 As Alcuin explains each aspect of grammatica, he demonstrates how the building blocks of language signify both in context and per se, and unites the discipline of grammatica with the other foundational liberal arts, dialectic and rhetoric, that is, with (rational) philosophy. From there, Alcuin presumes, the student will ascent the gradus of wisdom through the study of the liberal arts and eventually reach the height of vera philosophia, or theological study.

Poetry was the medium through which masters could teach students how to read and to understand the multiple meanings within a text. In turn, students used poetry to demonstrate their mastery of grammar, rhetoric and poetics. Hrabanus Maurus, one of

Alcuin’s students, who went on to become abbot and master of the great Carolingian monastic school at Fulda composed a collection of shaped poetry entitled De laudibus

Sanctae Crucis that demonstrates the Carolingian monastic understanding of the multiple ways in which a text could signify.13 The collection contains 28 poems on the

Cross and related theological themes, as well as a dedicatory poem to Louis the Pious

12 PL 101, coll. 860A-B

13 Shaped poetry has been a neglected field of study until quite recently primarily because critics held two prejudices against it: First, as an intermedial art form and as such relied too heavily on the visual aspect over the literary to convey its meaning or purpose, and secondly, it was seen as popular, and therefore, not particularly good, literature. For an overview of scholarship on shaped poetry up to the last decade of the twentieth century, as well as a defense of the genre in light of new literary theory, see D. Higgins, “Pattern Poetry as Paradigm,” Poetics Today 10.2 (1989), 401-428. Higgins notes, 403-407, that estimating the value of a shaped poem cannot rely too much on either the literary quality alone or the visual quality alone, because it is the interplay of the two that determines how the poem conveys its full meaning. The sophistication of Hrabanus Maurus’ poem in terms of its visual design and its metrical intricacy refutes any claim that the poem relies too heavily on visual cues to convey meaning or that it does not occupy a higher literary register. 103 and survives for us in a number of manuscripts. Hrabanus also wrote a guide to the poems, a teachers’ manual of sorts, to point out the intricacies of each poem.14

These poems are written in grids and illustrations appear within the text that direct the reader to read separate lines in the shaped spaces. For example Vat. Reg. Lat

124, fol 12v contains a poem of 35 lines of scripta continua [Image 1]. The poem uses a handful of abbreviations, or ligatures that ensure that Hrabanus’ texts can read not only left to right but also in other directions as the shaped illumination indicates.15 Hrabanus’ poem employs a cruciform shape to divide the text into four quadrants, and both arms of the cross read “Inclyta crux domini [Christi] fundamen et aulae. The cross divides the text into four quadrants, each of which includes an additional text of one phrase concerning, in turn, apostles, martyrs, patriarchs, and prophets.

The 35-line poem visually represents and enhances the meaning of the text by representing the very structure that the large text addresses.16 The poem’s shape pictorially demonstrates that the Cross is the foundation of Christian salvation and, by extension, the foundation of Paradise. The verses embedded in the text of the poem form the shape of the mansio Christi which the Passion and Cross, in essence, constructed.17

14 E. Sears, "Louis the Pious as Miles Christi: The Dedicatory Image in Hrabanus Maurus's De laudibus sanctae crucis," in Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840), ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), 605-628, at 607-08.

15 Hrabanus writes a defense of his employment of abbreviations, citing Optatian’s use of some abbreviations in the collection he had composed for Constantine I in the 4th century. Ibid., 608.

16 16 E. Cook, "Figured Poetry," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979), 1, argues that “[t]he maker of a figured poem attempts to straighten the attachment between word and object to as near an identity as is possible whilst using a non-iconic script. The urge to assert this connection seems to be part of an urge to deny the randomness of all the forms of the world, and to make the discursive, fleeting words of human temporality overlay, and become synonymous with, the word which was in the beginning and is outside time. However specious this man-forged link may be, the finished acrostic or figured poem...achieves a seemingly neutral and unidiosyncratic fittingness...in which sage readers in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance perceived a tightly structured design.”

17 Iure domus Christi posuit quos culmen, in ipsum / Condistis, ima plebs alma est voce reperta. / Sancta salutaris et crux fundamine summo / Insita, constructa, crucifixi robore fixa (lines 6- 9). 104

Image I Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, fol 12v 105

The foundation of the structure is the cruciform in-text verse that divides the text into quarters, what the text of the poem itself refers to as the firmata columna. The columns signified by the four arms of the Cross dividing the four parts of the poem are the Apostles, martyrs, Patriarchs, and prophets, each receiving their own verse embedded within the text of the larger poem. Visually, the former two groups of holy men and women appear above the latter two groups, signifying the supercession of the role of Patriarchs by the Apostles, and that of prophets by martyrs. This points to the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scriptures in the advent of Christianity, an important point to emphasize for monastic students of Scripture. In this way, the contents of the interwoven verses of the poem bear evidence of the fruits of monastic study of Scriptures and the Early Church Fathers.18 Hrabanus’ poetry also demonstrates a familiarity with the carmen cancellatum of the Merovingian poet Venantius Fortunatus, of St Boniface, and of his own teachers, Alcuin and Paul the Deacon.

The structure of the poem and its intratextual verses points to two key aspects of monastic poetry. Hrabanus’ poem must be experienced visually by the reader in order to convey its fullest meaning; it was not meant for oral presentation or consumption.

Monastic poets, following the grammatical teachings of the earliest Carolingian monastic reformers, understood individual letters to have a (visual) significance beyond their place within the (primary) word or text. The structure of the text also points to its meaning and requires a reader to realize the structural meaning embedded in the shape of the text. Hrabanus’ poem centers on the Cross of Christ as a symbol of his triumph, the foundation and the courts of the reign of God. Each of the four verses addressing a group of inhabitants of that kingdom are shaped as a courtyard – a square. This shape would also have evoked the image of a monastic cloister, with the embedded verses

18 Sears, "Louis the Pious as Miles Christi," 609 also notes that in other poems from the collection, Hrabanus employs the monastic study of numerical symbolism and computation in the exegesis of Scripture. 106 forming the hallways of the interior courtyard and the rest of the text, the open space in the center, and consequently would have drawn a visual simile between the monastic cloister and Paradise. As in medieval architecture, the spatial relationship between the letters provides meaning to the text, both to the shorter verses contained within the shaped spaces and to the larger text into which the spaces are incorporated.

In addition to these mimetic aspects of the shaped text, the poems intended to draw attention to the ordered design of God’s creation. The parallel that medieval authors drew between grammatical composition and architecture posited an underlying structural principle to their texts. In effect, reading a shaped poem with embedded verses such as Hrabanus’ is an act of meditation. In monastic education, the meditative reading of complex acrostic poetry honed skills similar to those required for Scriptural study and commentary.19 The monk had to read slowly and closely so as not to miss any detail of the text, and his intention was to draw closer to an understanding of God through the text and its multiplicity of symbols.

Hrabanus takes care to preserve the structure of the poetry even as he is at pains to create a shaped poem that signifies in multiple ways for his reader. This poem is written in dactylic hexameters on a 35x35 letter grid. With a minimal use of abbreviations, he manages to ensure that each horizontal line corresponds to a single line of hexameter. Additionally, each of the four internal square verses is one line of hexameter read across the top and down the right-hand side, and then down the left- hand side and across the bottom. Hrabanus’ emphasis on the regularity of quantitative meter further underscores the unity or harmony of all parts of the text, which exists in imitation of Divine perfection and unity. The humanist scholar Leon Battista Alberti advocated a similar reflection of perfection in his study of classical architecture when he

19 Cook, "Figured Poetry," 3-7, notes that acrostic poems with a complexity similar to those of Optatian and Hrabanus are uncommon, but among the few that are found, the poems are laden Christian themes and Scriptural numerology. 107 noted that a beautiful building was one in which all the parts were interdependent and necessary such that “nothing could be added or taken away except for the worse.”20

From the writings of its earliest authors, the Christian poetic tradition placed great importance on the use of meter. Ambrose wrote hymns that were carefully constructed to appeal to his broad audience as Bishop of Milan. Augustine followed his master in being mindful of the “psychology of versification” in his own poetry.21 In a psalm that he wrote against the Donatists, Augustine avoids the confinement of a poetic meter lest he obscure his meaning causa metri, and lose his audience or risk misinterpretation.22 Augustine’s psalm consisted entirely of sixteen syllable verses and was divided into twenty twelve-line strophes. Every line of the poem ended in either e or ae. Augustine employed these devices in order to fix the text by making alterations easy to identify and difficult to formulate. The poetics of Ambrose and Augustine appealed to insular poets and, in turn, to the Carolingians, who linked themselves to Roman tradition and held classical authors in high esteem.23 Quantitative meters such as are found in classical Latin poetry seem to be a hallmark of Benedictine monastic reform poetry. Examples of early Anglo Saxon metric poetry are rhythmic, that is with meter based on the stressing of syllables not on the grammatical rules of syllable length.24 The

Carolingians adapted the patristic aesthetic to the more classical dactylic hexameter and elegiac meter primarily by means of leonine rhyme and the sort of repetition we find in

Paul the Deacon’s Benedict poem.

20 Ibid., 6-7. This aesthetic comes from Roman architectural theory. See M.W. Jones, Principles of Roman Architecture (New Haven, CT, 2000), esp. 33-48.

21 Jones, “Carolingian Aesthetic,” 327.

22 Jones, “Carolingian Aesthetic,” 328-29.

23 Jones, “Carolingian Aesthetic,” 331-33.

24 E. C. Teviotdale, "Latin Verse Inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon Art," Gesta 35.2 (1996), 99-110, at 99-100. 108

Hrabanus took such great care to preserve the meter in his shaping of the text because it adds to a deeper understanding of the poem. Hrabanus here sings a song of praise for Christ’s heroic victory (cantem clara tropaea) and uses the classical heroic meter to emphasize the triumph. Furthermore, he employs the same metrical composition for both the opening half-line of the poem and the opening half-line of the thematic line that forms the central cross as do Vergil and Homer.25 In employing these metrical schemes, Hrabanus not only demonstrates his knowledge of classical poetry, but makes the claim that the heroic victory about which he sings surpasses the deeds recounted in the epics of Homer and Vergil. Again we see the medieval poet assert a

“strong” claim by employing the canonized form of the hexameter line but applying it to the Passion narrative and adding the conceit of needing to employ echoes of both Vergil and Homer to do the subject justice.

Alongside the metric allusions to classical poetry, Hrabanus employs several relatively uncommon Greek-derived words, such as tropaea, philax and Arcton, as well as opening the central line of the poem with inclyta, a learned affectation common in the literature of Carolingian monastics. Hrabanus’ employment of classical echoes and his use of shaped poetry imitate courtly poetry of the late Roman Empire. Publilius

Optatianus Porfyrius, a poet from North Africa, wrote works in a similar style at the court of Constantine I in the early fourth century. Optatian wrote shaped poetry in imitation of Greek tradition, received imperial appointments and offices under

Constantine and wrote a series of poems that he presented to the emperor in the 830s, probably at the time of his restoration to imperial dignity in 833-34.26 Though

25 Both Hrabanus’ lines begin −∪∪−∪∪−. Furthermore, the opening line (Crux rogo sacra Dei signa mihi numine pectus) follows the same metrical scheme as the first hexameter of the Illiad, and the cruciform line (Inclyta crux Domini, Christi fundamen et aulae) follows the same scheme as the Aeneid’s first line.

26 Cf. T. D. Barnes, "Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius," The American Journal of Philology 96.2 (1975), 173-86 for a full account of Optatian’s career. Sears, "Louis the Pious as Miles Christi," 109

Optatian’s shaped poetry employs techniques from ancient Greek poets like Theocritus, they surpass these ancient models in what E. Cook calls “acrostic complexity.”27

Optatian composed poems that had a fixed number of characters in each line, giving the primary text a rectangular shape, and then embedded within the larger poem, but not disturbing its continuity or flow, smaller shaped verses. This is the model that Hrabanus

Maurus sought to imitate. By including these imitations of Roman imperial court poetry,

Hrabanus continues the efforts of the Frankish court to invoke Rome as a primary characteristic of the Carolingian political identity.

Carolingian rulers consciously tried to link themselves to their Roman and

Christian heritage, in which the reign of Constantine loomed large. The legend and symbolism that came to surround Constantine’s victory and his ascension to imperial office attributed his victory and ascent to divine providence and gave his imperial rule an aura of divinity. Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica and Vita Constantini provide what is essentially a theology of the Christian Empire and Christian Emperor. There also was an element of competition between the new western Carolingian Empire and the established eastern Byzantine Empire that encouraged the western empire to maintain close ties with Christian Rome and to frequently invoke the classical Roman heritage to under gird the legitimacy of their imperial claims.28

605, notes that the dating that Hrabanus himself gives in the dedicatory preface to Louis indicates that the collection of poems dedicated to the theological themes surrounding the Holy Cross, Christ, and the kingdom of Heaven were completed in 813/14.

27 Cook, "Figured Poetry," 2-3; D. Higgins, Pattern Poetry: Guide to an Unknown Literature (Albany, NY, 1987), 6-8; and D. Higgins, "Pattern Poetry as Paradigm," 407-408.

28 In the Vita Constantini, Eusebius presents a portrait of the Christian emperor as actively involved in the liturgical and doctrinal issues of church, as evidenced by Constantine’s interest in the Councils of Nicaea (VC, 3.4-3.14) and Tyre (VC, 3.41-3.42); whose military victories were divinely ordained (VC, 1.29 and 1.37); and whose own behavior and policies were reflections of Christianity (VC, 1.17 and 3.1-3.2). In the HE, Book 10, Eusebius offers inserts into the text a number of documents and speeches that further underscore the qualities that defined Constantine as a Christian emperor. 110

Louis the Pious inherited a kingdom in which the political identity and the religious identity had been closely bound together and in which the religious elite served as important symbols of dynastic legitimacy. By dedicating a series of complex, esoteric, meditative monastic poems to his patron, the emperor Louis the Pious, Hrabanus includes the emperor in the monastic literary circle in the same way Louis’ father had been. And with an eye toward Rome, Hrabanus offered a series of shaped poems in honor of the emperor Louis the Pious, just as Optatian had for Constantine. In what must be a presentation manuscript of the collection, composed at Fulda under Hrabanus’ own supervision, Vat. Reg. Lat 124, the dedication to Louis stands at the front of the work. The poems, though originally written a nearly two decades earlier, were likely intended from their inception to be given as a gift to the Emperor. Sears argues that the depiction of Louis in the manner of a Roman imperial portrait and the inscription Tu

Hludovicum Criste corona indicate that the dedication and the collection were to bolster

Louis’ position as he reclaimed power after a decidedly un-imperial public penitential rite.29 The depiction of Louis as a soldier crowned by Christ included him in the

Carolingian monastic community, an interpretation that the form and content of the poetry in the collection reinforces. For a monk educated in Scriptural study and monastic tradition like Hrabanus, the notion of a soldier of Christ would immediately call to mind the description from St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and the use of similar imagery in Benedict’s Rule and other Patristic monastic writings.30 Like his father before

29 Sears, "Louis the Pious as Miles Christi," 616-28. On the public penance, see M. de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840 (Cambridge, 2009).

30 Eph. 6:10-18, and also cf. I Thess. 5:8; 2 Cor. 6:4-8, 10:3-6; Rom. 6:13; 2 Tim. 2:1-4. RB, prol.21. The imagery is picked up by theologians and hagiographers of the Early Church. cf. Tertullian, Ad Martyras, 3.1 in Tertulliani Opera Pars I, ed. E. Dekkers, CCSL I (Turnholt, 1954), pp. 3-8; Tertullian, De corona, 11.1, in Tertulliani Opera Pars II, ed. E. Kroymann, CCSL II (Turnholt, 1954), pp. 1037-1065; Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini in J. Fontaine, ed. & commentary, Sulpice Sévère, Vie de Saint Martin, Sources Chrétiennes, 3 vol. (Paris, 1967-69) - Sulpicius refers to Martin’s familiaria arma in 16.7 of the vita, including among these ascetic practices, the Sign of the Cross and prayer. 111 him, Louis is honored as a member of the monastic community in return for his patronage and protection of monastic interests. In Louis’ situation, a quid pro quo is understood: Hrabanus hopes for a return to stability in imperial rule and in turn to society as a whole – to Louis’ heirs, to the rebelling provincial nobility and to the hierarchy of the Frankish Church.

Hrabanus was not content to design a set of shaped poems that recalled or even merely equaled the set that Optatian presented to Constantine. From his allusions to famous classical metrical patterns and the intricacy of his design in Inclyta crux Domini to his use of interlocking Greek words in another poem of the collection, to the complexity of his interwoven verses in the dedicatory poem, Hrabanus intends to surpass

Optatian. The folia of Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, the likely presentation copy of the collection, have been dyed purple and the illumination that highlights the interwoven verses within the various poems is on a par with some of the finest surviving Carolingian display and presentation codices. Hrabanus’ shaped poetry emphasised the Roman Byzantine tradition of courtly poetry, and linked the Carolingian dynasty with the memory of the emperor Constantine.31

Hrabanus’ collection of poems was not intended for dissemination to a wide audience, and could not be used for such a purpose due to the intricacies of the text and the close union of text and image. The high level of literacy found in monasteries and among a select few monastic or clerical scholars at the royal court was necessary for an appreciation of the works. In this milieu, the poems served a dual function: they promoted loyalty and admiration for the emperor and were particularly suited to

31 Higgins, "Pattern Poetry as Paradigm," 414-19 notes that pattern poetry, outside of that of the twentieth century, has not intended to stress innovation and originality. Instead, the poets have “worked within the traditions associated with the form,” even down to imitating the shapes of the received tradition. Higgins characterizes this as a poet “deliberately allying himself with a tradition.” For a focused study of this sort of borrowing related to the Anglo-Saxon monastic reform of the tenth and eleventh centuries and the use of the traditional poetic form to bolster authority, see Teviotdale, "Latin Verse Inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon Art," passim. 112 monastic study. This sort of poem does not signify fully unless the words and letters are placed in the proper shape. The words shape or create a visual image that mirrors the content of the text. Just as the monk is taught regarding his own bearing and behavior reflects his interior life, the image is formed by the substance of the text. Monastic life aimed at shaping a student through text, and shaped poetry offered an example of a mimetic text that underscored the monastic effort at effecting an interior conversion through study and discipline that was visible externally. By dedicating his collection of poems to the Emperor Louis, Hrabanus links him to the monastic community of the

Carolingian Empire. This inclusion was beneficial both for Louis, who tapped into a long-standing literary tradition that helped to reinforce his royal authority, and for the monastic communities throughout the Carolingian world, who through mutual cooperation could ensure royal protection of their interests.

The gift of the text offered Louis membership in the monastic textual community in a somewhat different way than the first generation of monastic authors had included

Charlemagne in the monastic community of scholars. Court scholars like Alcuin and

Einhard and Paul the Deacon included Charlemagne as a scholar in his own right.

Whether or not his learning merited this status aside, the monastic scholars at

Charlemagne’s court included their patron fully in the community, going so far as to ascribe to the king attributes that reflected the values of the monastic life.32 Hrabanus

Maurus’ gift of his De laudibus sanctae crucis does not assume or intend to create an image of Louis as a scholar. Although he does play with the double meaning present the soldier of Christ image, Hrabanus does not praise Louis’ learning or his interest in preserving the scholarly tradition and culture of the monastery. The text is given as a presentation codex, and as such, the text is reifed; with its purple pages and carefully executed illuminations, the work given to Louis is a symbol of Louis inclusion in the

32 Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne is a prime example of this inclusion. 113 community of monks more as protector than as a learned patron. This is accentuated by the dedicatory poem depicting Louis as a soldier, an image that, in fact, would have been better suited to the reign and conquests of his father than he.

Hrabanus’ collection of poems operates on one level within the textual community of monks, where it illustrated the grammatical principles at the foundation of monastic education, scholarship, and culture, and on another level as an object that symbolizes the relationship between king and courtier and demonstrates the loyalty of

Hrabanus’ monastic community at Fulda and pictorially requests favorable treatment and protection in return. As such, the work represents a split, initiated by the

Carolingian monastic community, between the world of the court and the monastery; texts now functioned differently within and without the monastic community.

Hrabanus’ use of structure and shape to convey multiple meanings in his poetry illustrates the basic principles of grammar and textual composition that he had been taught as a monastic student under Alcuin. Alcuin’s writings on medieval grammar and rhetoric were heavily influenced by Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria. This Roman grammatical and rhetorical text was the earliest and most exhaustive study of grammar, logic, and rhetoric available to medieval scholars. They studied it at length, issued their own compendia and abridgements of it, incorporated its tenets into their own grammatical treatises, and used it as a basis for medieval education.33 Quintilian divides the construction of a speech into five parts, inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, pronuntiatio, the first three of which M. Carruthers notes have parallels in classical architectural theory.34 Carolingian scholars used the same phases to describe the process

33 J. O. Ward, "Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages," Rhetorica 13.3 (1995), 231-284.

34 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, 3.3. Carruthers, "The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle Ages," 896. Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, 36, writes that “rhetoric – which involved style and expression, invention and imitation, influence 114 of textual composition and connected the phases of speech construction to the arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, noting that a speech must be well-constructed, grounded in proper ideas and eloquently argued. In his treatise on rhetoric, Alcuin quotes

Quintilian nearly verbatim when he describes the five parts of rhetoric.35 But Alcuin goes further in his treatise, connecting the study of rhetoric to the attainment of virtue.

Inventio Alcuin defines as “excogitatio rerum verarum ac verisimilium,” linking it to logic and also to truth-seeking.36 Grammar is important for both dispositio, or the order of the argument, and for elocutio, which Alcuin says is idoneorum verborum accommodatio.37

Alcuin’s description of the argument and how it is formulated in words contains a subtle but important shift from the classical understanding presented in Quintilian’s

Institutio Oratoria. In Alcuin’s treatise, the argument is thought through completely – excogitatio – and determined to be true prior to the application of any words or signifiers.38 Applying the appropriate words and properly ordering the argument are not means by which the underlying idea is validated, instead these are tools, or building blocks, that bring to light the core principles of the argument. This notion of inventio is a break from the classical understanding of the term: Quintilian’s work does not consider the process of inventio to be valuable separate from how the remaining steps in the oratorical process are executed; inventio in the Institutio Oratoria is the first

and figurative thinking – was arguably the discipline closest to modern art theory. Rhetoric proves rich in perspectives worth considering in relation to architecture.”

35 Alcuin, Dialogus de rhetorica et virtutibus, PL 101, coll. 919-946; in particular, coll. 919B-922C and 939C-941B.

36 PL 101, col. 921D.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid. 115 building block toward a complete structure.39 For the Carolingian student, inventio was the framework whose innate structural soundness it was his task to do justice in dispositio and elocutio.40 Situated in this medieval context, textual ornamentation drawn from ancient sources was not the mere cloaking of a structure in an artistic edifice, it was instead, the gathering of building blocks and fragments together in a synthesis or unified whole suitable to the contemporary context. The elocutio of the text was aimed at revealing to the audience the fundamental principle, or inventio, of the structure; the building blocks should form a unified and elegant text in which both the parts and the whole fully conveyed the meaning or underlying truth.

Alcuin’s treatise bears the marks of both his own educational background and the court setting in which Carolingian educational, and cultural reform for that matter, took shape. Charlemagne’s capitularies and conciliar decrees focused on ensuring a body of properly edited and corrected texts on which monastic education could be based.

Alcuin’s De grammatica aims to systematically teach the Latin language and the skills required to study, compile, and edit texts. But in noting the ways in which the architecture of a text could signify beyond the meaning of the text per se, he was writing a handbook for monastic Scriptural study and commentary. Medieval grammatical treatises that abridged or synthesized classical grammatical texts, came to be criticized by Renaissance scholars who believed it fell to them to restore the classical texts to their original fullness and integrity. This Renaissance impetus continued in scholarship and their prejudice against the work of the medieval compilators with it until quite recently, obscuring the importance of the compilations both in preserving the texts and in the monastic educational tradition.41

39 cf. Institutio Oratoria, 3.3.

40 PL 101, col. 921D-922B.

41 Ward, "Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages," 232-33. 116

The monastic discipline of Scriptural study and commentary is illustrative of the medieval conception of the writing process as parallel to architectural construction. The aggregation of commentary that became attached to the texts of Scripture cannot be considered merely a study aid or a series of footnotes. Scriptural commentary became part of the text itself and marginal notes made in one manuscript were copied as part of that text and then additional commentary could be added to that as well. Grammatical commentary on texts was generative rather than deconstructive; commentators sought to provide the text with an exegesis that reproduced and resituated it in light of new cultural conditions.42

The result of the careful building of text upon text was the construction of a monastic culture focused on learning as the means of ascent toward perfection and toward God.43 In his commentary on Ecclesiastes, Alcuin situates the opening verses in the context of monastic study and interprets the text as underpinning the culture of learning within the monastery. His commentary on the verse that reads Cunctae res difficiles, non potest homo eas explicare sermone. Non saturatur oculus visu, nec auris impletur auditu, interprets the verse as a affirmation of the monastic discipline and a condemnation of those who pretend to wisdom and knowledge without submitting

42 See L. Coon, "Historical Fact and Exegetical Fiction in the Carolingian Vita S. Sualonis," Church History 72.1 (2003), 1-24; and S. Vanderputten, "'Literate Memory' and Social Reassessment in Tenth-Century Monasticism," Mediaevistik 17 (2004), 78-85.

43 On Carolingian exegesis see: C. Chazelle and B. V. N. Edwards, eds., The Study of the Bible in the Carolingian Era (Turnhout, 2003); A. Firey, “The Letter of the Law, Carolingian Exegetes and the Old Testament” in, eds. J.D. McAuliffe, Barry Walfish, and Joseph Ward Goering With Reverence for the Word: Medieval Scriptural Exegesis in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Oxford, 2003), 204-224; J. J. Contreni, "Carolingian Biblical Culture," in Iohannes Scottus Eriugena: The Bible and Hermeneutics, ed. C. Steel, J. McEvoy, and G. Van Riel (Louvain, 1996), 1-23; Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture ;Lubac, Medieval Exegesis I: The Four Senses of Scripture. Also M. Gorman, “The Commentary on Genesis of Claudius of Turin and Biblical Studies under Louis the Pious.” Speculum 72 (1997), 279-329, provides a focused account of exegetical production in the Carolingian period, particularly 286-88, which discuss the preface that Claudius wrote for his Genesis commentary and in which he outlines his methodology. 117 themselves to the yolk of study.44 This interpretation of the text became so much a part of the tradition of Scriptural study that it appears almost verbatim in Walafrid Strabo’s commentary on the same text. When disciples in the monastic school learned the Book of Ecclesiastes, they learned it with Alcuin’s commentary, and the commentary of other masters like Jerome and Augustine.45

Biblical commentators from the Carolingian Age drew upon the work of Patristic authors and compiled ancient commentaries alongside contemporary ones and added their own remarks where they saw fit. Claudius of Turin, a cleric with close ties to Louis the Pious, describes this procedure in the preface to his commentary on Genesis. He addresses the preface to Dructeramnus, abbot of Saint-Chaffre and perhaps his patron.46

In it, he describes a methodical process of compiling the commentary of Church fathers and defenders of orthodoxy, whose works were the fulfillment of God’s promise to fill the earth with knowledge, a process that Claudius understood as occurring through aggregate work of generations of theologians and commentators.47 Carolingian biblical commentators believed that the gradus of wisdom rose higher during the course of human history as generations of scholars, monks, and theologians studied the texts and read and compiled and added commentary to the text.

44 Alcuin’s explanation of Ecc. 1:8, “All things are difficult; man is unable to explain these things with speech. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled by hearing,” is as follows: Nullatenus valet sermo explicare causas naturasque rerum; nec oculus saturari, ut rei possit dignitatem intueri; nec auris, instituente doctore, ad summam rerum notitiam pervenire. Nam modo omnia in aenigmate cernuntur, et ex parte intelliguntur, donec perfecta veniat scientia, quae in hoc mortali corpore esse non poterit. Tamen haec sententia maxime contra eos agit qui, sine labore et discendi studio, sanctarum Scripturarum sibi notitiam promittunt, aestimantes se sapientes, cum sunt insipientes. (PL 100, col. 673A-B).

45 Walafrid’s commentary, PL 113, col. 1115-1126, quotes extensively from both authors. He likely studied Alcuin’s commentary during his time under Hrabanus Maurus at Fulda. See also D. A. Bullough, Carolingian Renewal: Sources and Heritage (New York, 1991), ch 5 on the influence of patristic authors on Alcuin’s theology.

46 On Dructeramnus, see M. Gorman, “The Commentary on Genesis of Claudius of Turin,” 284 and n. 42.

47 Ibid., 286-88 and Claudius of Turin, Praefatio, MGH Epp. IV, p.590-92. 118

Study and reading was aimed at wisdom and achieving a better understanding of the Divine and were the central communal activity of monasticism. Textual commentary did not break a text into consumable and understandable parts or elucidate portions of it; rather, these commentaries were grafted onto the text and became part of its tradition. Monastic education and monastic writings in a wide variety of genres built onto the foundation of Scriptural commentary and other writings from early Christian authors as well as the literary heritage they had received from Classical authors. In drawing from both traditions in their own work, Carolingian authors took their cue from the supportive royal patronage of Charlemagne and constructed literary works that paid homage to the received tradition, but also were situated in a new cultural and social context. Charlemagne cultivated an image of his reign and his royal power that relied on close ties to Rome, the papacy, and Christian imagery. His societal reforms, which are for the most part indistinguishable from his ecclesiastical and monastic policies, aimed at creating a unified Christian kingdom of the Franks over which he presided with both temporal and sacral authority.48

Charlemagne invited scholars to his court and appointed abbots in monasteries to teach and study the texts. His patronage of learning went beyond the political benefits of creating a broad educational system that taught a common culture. Charlemagne envisioned an “ecclesiological project” that would achieve social reform through the efforts of an educated, disciplined and organized hierarchy of clerics and monks.49 The

Carolingian documents that addressed educational reform aimed at creating a minimum

48 The bibliography on this point is vast. See especially R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians; N. Staubach, "Cultus divinus und karolingische Reform," Frühmittelalterliche Studien 18 (1984); M. A. Claussen, The Reform of the Frankish Church: Chrodegang of Metz and the Regula Canonicorum in the Eighth Century, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought; 4th ser., vol. 61 (Cambridge, 2004)

49 See S. Vanderputten, “Faith and Politics in Early Medieval Society: Charlemagne and the frustrating failure of an ecclesiological project” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 96 (2001), 311-33. 119 standard of learning and literacy for the clergy and religious – priests, bishops, monks and abbots – so that they could reform the laity.50 The royal effort latched on to the learning, scholarship, and literary production already being cultivated in monasteries.

The model that informed these documents came from several monasteries that had an already long and prestigious history of scholarship. The Carolingian royal family had favored a number of monasteries that had active scriptoria and were well-known scholarly centers: Corbie, St Denis, and Tours among them. Charlemagne hoped to improve upon and spread this monastic model beyond the Carolingian heartland and southern Gaul to newly acquired lands.51

The link between societal reform, the royal building program at Aachen, and the educational reforms, with their connection to the production of liturgical texts and

Sacred Scripture, all of which were part of a Carolingian effort to connect imperium and pietas in the person of the Frankish king were impressed upon the monks and religious at court whom Charlemagne tasked with writing and implementing the reform program.52 In particular, the Psalms, the centerpiece of monastic daily prayer according to the Rule of Saint Benedict, was an important component of royal piety. No shortage of Psalters was produced for the king and the royal family, some of which strengthen the typological parallel between David, Charlemagne’s literary namesake, and Christ with their manuscript illuminations.53 This iconographic parallel is also used in the interior

50 Ibid, 318-324. Vanderputten points out that Charlemagne’s effort was doomed to fail because he hoped that a “partially reformed Church” would be able to effect a moral renewal of society.

51 See R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-987 (New York, 1983), 59-62, for a detailed discussion of Charlemagne’s policy regarding monasteries and expansion.

52 See R. McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge, 2008), 330-340 for an overview of the connections between royal piety and Carolingian book production.

53 On the illumination of the Utrecht Psalter and the Christ-David parallel, see M. Stokstad, Medieval Art (New York, 1986), 124-125 and fig. 5.15; for the Mondsee Psalter, see McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity 338. See also, “Imagines Regum and their 120 design of Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen, where his throne sits elevated above the altar on a second tier almost directly across from a mosaic of Christ in Majesty situated in the palace’s dome. The palace chapel, which recalls the imperial palace of the

Emperor Justinian at Ravenna, from which it plundered a great deal of building material, “served as the centre of the liturgical celebrations and reforms promoted by the ruler.”54 Owing to the importance of architecture in the monastic setting, discussed in the previous chapter, and the close link to learning and education reform encouraged by royal iconography the process of textual study and commentary naturally shared a vocabulary with architecture and architectural borrowings.

Alcuin’s inscriptions, discussed in the first chapter, use an architectural metaphor to illustrate the process of textual study, and the scriptural commentaries that medieval scholars produced contain a verse-by-verse interpretation that includes a compilation of earlier commentators as well as providing notes that seem relevant to contemporary theological or socio-cultural questions. In these commentaries, the interests of the monastic scholars dovetailed with Charlemagne’s societal reform interests. For example,

A. Firey argues that the Carolingian interest in Leviticus and the proliferation of commentaries on that book despite Patristic neglect may be related to Frankish anxiety over the incorporation of conquered peoples into their kingdoms.55 Using commentaries from Greek Fathers in the absence of works from Latin authors, Carolingian scholars interpreted Levitical prescriptions regarding Jewish law and custom in a way that provided a parallel for the Christianization of newly conquered Germanic peoples and

Significance in the Early Medieval West” in Bullough, Carolingian Renewal: Sources and Heritage 39-96.

54 McKitterick, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity 340.

55 A. Firey, “The Letter of the Law,” passim. 121 creating a distinct Frankish Christian culture.56 Building an argument by marshalling ancient works as the foundation for new interpretation lent the weight of tradition and the authority of the past to Carolingian claims in literature the same way they did in architecture.

Because of the parallels that medieval scholars drew between architecture and the written text, a brief look at how the medieval artists and architects understood their use of spolia and at how historians of medieval art and architecture have approached the question of spolia is instructive for the interpretation of textual allusion in Carolingian literature. Historically, scholars have used the term spolia rather broadly to designate anything from “the most imperceptible to the most monumental” reuses of ancient materials, from the grinding down of marble from buildings that have fallen into disuse to the conversion of the Pantheon into a Christian church.57 Recent scholarship on art and architecture favors a more narrow understanding of the term as describing

“architectural or sculptural elements transferred to new contexts where they may perhaps, although not necessarily, retain an echo of their original purpose.”58 The columns and arches with which medieval illuminators framed manuscript pages might contain a variety of architectural elements.59 The columns depicted were often of

56 Commentaries on Leviticus from Origen and Hesychius of Jerusalem had been translated into Latin by the sixth century, see E.A. Matter, “The Church Fathers and the Glossa Ordinaria” in I. D. Backus and A. Bevan, eds., The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, 2 vols. (New York, 1997), 83-111, at 87. Cf. also Ch. 1, above, n. 45.

57 M.F. Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation: Prolegomena to an Understanding of Spolia in Early Christian Rome, Analecta Romana Instituti Danici. Supplementum, 33 (Rome, 2003), 23- 25.

58 Ibid., 25. Elsewhere in the book, Hansen notes parallels between Early Christian and early medieval writings and building projects from the same period, and briefly surveys the few authors who commented on the employment of spolia, all of whom note a parallel between the discipline of rhetoric and the architectural employment of spolia, pp. 36-38.

59 These decorative architectural elements served as mnemonics within the manuscript itself. It cannot be coincidence that the architectural frames found in manuscripts are precisely the sort that we find in the Rhetorica ad Herennium and that date back to Aristotle’s treatise on Memory and Recollection, and which later monastic writers revise to include more monastic buildings 122 different colors or had different capitals from one another, an imitation of the use of classical architectural spolia in early medieval church architecture. Just as Roman columns could be used to indicate the triumph of Christianity over classical paganism or to lend authority and majesty to new Christian foundations, the architecture of a text could include structures and material from classical sources to achieve the same ends.60

The materials together with their situation in a new context gave the work meaning.61

Interpreting the employment of spolia in medieval architecture is complex because the appropriation and reuse of an object layered new meanings onto old. Even if the reuse of an object had the intention of disconnecting the ancient artifact from its canonical use and reinscribing it with a new meaning, a full appreciation of the new meaning could only be achieved in light of the object’s original context.62 Scholars generally have interpreted Charlemagne’s architectural borrowings and importations for

Aachen as representing and perpetuating the classical tradition; Charlemagne used the imported materials and the classical architectural forms to lay claim to the same sort of status as the Roman emperors.63 But several recent studies have argued that the Aachen

including the monastery church and the cloister. See Carruthers, "The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle Ages," 893-895, who further notes that monasteries built by St Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot Suger, Hugh of St Victor and Thierry of Chartres among others are designs in which “the building includes elements of encyclopedic mnemonic formae.” Inscriptions of the sort discussed in the first chapter are the way in which monks began to create a mental composition of an ideal architectural mnemonic for monastic life. This ideal culminated in the drawing of the St-Gall Plan. For more on the Plan of St-Gall and its use of meditative and mnemonic aids, see W. W. Horn et al., The Plan of St. Gall: A study of the architecture & economy of, & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery, 3 vols., California Studies in the History of Art, 19 (Berkeley, CA, 1979) and W. Braunfels, Monasteries of Western Europe: The Architecture of the Orders, 3rd ed. (Princeton, 1972).

60 Carruthers, "The Poet as Master Builder: Composition and Locational Memory in the Middle Ages," 892-3. See also, Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, 34ff.

61 Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, 33-35.

62 See B. Brenk, "Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus Ideology," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41. Studies on Art and Archeology in Honor of Ernst Kitzinger on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (1987), 103-110.

63 W. Jacobsen, “Spolien in der karolingischen Architektur,” in J. Poeschke, Antike Spolien in der Architektur des Mittelalters und der Renaissance (Munich, 1996), 155-68. 123 building program departs from its late-Roman, Ravennate model and employs Roman elements in a non-classical style and that the Carolingian architectural aesthetic went beyond borrowing Roman and classical elements in an effort to recall the past as a means of legitimizing Carolingian power.64 These studies, influenced by the work of Michael

Baxandall and Pierre Bourdieu, argue that the medieval use of spolia was far more complex than mere borrowing of materials and reuse,65 and that contemporary interpretation of spolia was based on a cooperative strategy (between the architect or interpreter of the building or monument and the audience) of invention.

Medieval use of tradition and classical borrowings are as informative in where they introduce change as where they are imitative. Tradition was not a static notion that served to create a pre-determined path for imitation and interpretation. Instead, it was dynamic and subject to the accretion of interpretations and meanings. Knowing the origin of a thing was only part of the process of understanding the intention of its

64 The marble columns at Aachen, for example, contain elements that are Carolingian imitations meant to look like spolia and the so-called Roman spolia did not all come from Rome. Aachen seems to have been designed to imitate a Byzantine form but to use Roman spolia to explicitly reject the modern Byzantine ornate decorative elements in favor of more traditional Roman elements. See D. Kinney, “Roman Architectural Spolia,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 45.2 (2001), 138-161, at 147-8, and Brenk, "Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: Aesthetics versus Ideology," Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, notes that Christian architecture in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages represents a marked departure from the formalism of classical Roman style and displays what she calls an “aesthetic of heterogeneity” (cf. p. 168-180).

65 On complexity of meaning: M. Baxandall, Patterns of Intention: On the Historical Experience of Pictures (New Haven, CT, 1985), particularly 41-42 and 58-59. Baxandall notes that authorial intent is more difficult to determine when reuse is assumed to not admit any change. The intention that the audience perceives could very well be the unintended consequences of a choice made without reflection. It is only in the accretion of meaning through the changes made to a received influence or tradition that a work of art, architecture or literature displays “intention.” This dovetails with H. Bloom’s characterization of the work of the “strong” poet, who acts on a received influence in order to reveal his intention or altered meaning to his audience and make a value judgment on the relative position of the two uses. As with architectural spolia, so too with literary, there seems to be an element of conquest implied. On cooperation between architect and audience: Hansen, The Eloquence of Appropriation, 36: “Throughout the early Middle Ages, the tendency in descriptions of buildings was...an increasing attention towards the metaphorical or symbolical values of the earthly phenomena, including arcitecture.” She notes that although neither Eusebius in his Life of Constantine, nor Paulinus of Nola in his description of the churches at Nola detail the acquisition and use of spolia explicitly, both display a “rhetorical mindset comparing the present with the past and building upon it.” 124 placement and the depth of its meaning. As in art and architecture, so too in literature did the meaning of a text depend on the altered setting and cultural distance of an allusion more than on its original context.

A pastoral poem by Walafrid Stabo, a student of Hrabanus Maurus at Fulda, applies textual allusions from classical Roman poetry in a poem about an object of architectural spolia from fifth-century Ravenna. Walafrid began his education at

Reichenau and showed great literary talent from a young age. One of his earliest and most famous works, the Visio Wettini, is a work of 733 lines of hexameter verse with a prologue of asclepiads and an epilogue written in Ambrosian stanzas. His command of language and meter as well as his breadth of literary knowledge has earned him the designation “prodigy” by some scholars.66 Walafrid was sent to the monastery at Fulda in the mid-820s to be educated under Hrabanus Maurus. After several years at Fulda, he entered imperial service as a tutor at court for Louis the Pious’ youngest son, Charles. In the mid-830s he returned to Reichenau and was appointed abbot.67

By the time Walafrid became Charles’ tutor, the trend of admiration and cooperation between monasteries and the Carolingian court already had begun to fracture, as dynastic concerns and political strife between the peripheral nobility of the

Empire, Louis’ sons, and Louis demanded imperial attention and concessions, often at the expense of monastic interests and concerns. As the adult sons of Louis the Pious gained the loyalty of the nobility in the kingdoms allotted them by the Ordinatio Imperii of 817, Lothar, Pippin and Louis the German became avenues to greater power and

66 Cf. M. Brooke, "The Prose and Verse Hagiography of Walahfrid Strabo," in Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840), ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), 551-564, at 555.

67 Ibid., and the introduction contained in Walahfrid Strabo, Walahfrid Strabo’s “Libellus de exordiis et incrementis quarundam in observationibus ecclesiasticis rerum:” A Translation and Liturgical Commentary, ed., and trans, with introduction and commentary A. Harting-Corrêa, (Leiden, 1996). 125 influence for local nobles in their sub-kingdoms. The loyalty and attention of the regional nobility gave Louis’ sons, in turn, greater power within the larger Carolingian Empire and greater autonomy from their father.68 Louis, for his part, signaled, by means of his second marriage and the subsequent birth of his son Charles, that he intended to exercise the full power of his role as emperor for some time to come.69 Louis, drawing, perhaps, on his own experience and a sub-king in Aquitaine under Charlemagne, took great care throughout his rule to mitigate or shift the bases of power that his three elder sons could form.70 As Louis worked to shift centers of power, loyalty, and influence, the regional nobility and his own sons had to scramble to rebuild new networks, and exchange the beneficia and officia that formalized such ties.71 By the late 820s, military power became a primary focus of the alliances that the Carolingian rulers sought to form, and magnates and landowners that could supply manpower to ensure a king’s influence in the imperial balance of power could expect to be well-rewarded. In a realm with an increasing number of kings and a finite amount of land, monastic offices and monastic land holdings became gifts to loyal lay aristocrats.

In response to the shift in the royal focus toward gathering a strong aristocratic- military base and the detriment it posed to monasteries, monastic literature began to move from encomium and inclusion of the Carolingian ruler within the monastic community, as Hrabanus Maurus’ De laudibus sanctae crucis did, to competition with

68 de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814- 840, demonstrates the difficulty of adult sons in the Carolingian imperial structure, chapter 1, passim.

69 See Ibid. 31-32.

70 Ibid. 52-58; J. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London, 1992), 73; E. J. Goldberg, Struggle for Empire: Kingship and Conflict under Louis the German, 817-876 (Ithaca, NY, 2006); B. Kasten, “Königssöhne und Königsherrschaft: Untersuchungen zur Teilhabe am Reich in der Merowinger- und Karolingerzeit” (Thesis Ph. D. --Universität Bremen 1996., Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1997), 194-200.

71 Cf. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians. 126 the aristocracy and critique of the Carolingian ruler. The new era of critique applied the monastic understanding of poetry as a carefully designed structure built with attention to each building block, from word choice, sound alliteration, and allusions, to genre and meter. The monastic authors may have begun to despair of the poetry having a great deal of influence within the wider circle of potentates at court, but evidently still had confidence that close advisors to the emperor and his sons were reading and understanding their work.72 Within monastic circles, critical poems such as Walafrid’s outlined a socio-political structure that argued for the necessity of having the Church and her faithful monks and clerics at the center of Carolingian power, and the importance the emperor ensuring that he is embodiment of piety and faithfulness to the Church. In

Walafrid Strabo’s poem De imagine Tetrici, the link between architecture and literature is explored and the poem seems to measure the relative cultural influence of the two against each other as a metaphor for the power of political influence versus that of moral rectitude and virtue. The work examines the symbolism and meaning that could accrue on imported spolia as cultural baggage that can reveal the tarnish that has accrued on the Carolingian ruler’s image.73

72 For an indication that monastic scholars think that learning and literacy have fallen off, cf. Lupus of Ferrières, Ep 1. As for learned and high-ranking royal advisors, Einhard, for example, remained a major advisor to Louis the Pious until shortly before Louis death. In fact, Einhard himself employed the technique of offering critique through mimetic texts both in the vita Karoli (cf. M. M. Tischler, Einharts "Vita Karoli": Studien zur Entstehung, Überlieferung und Rezeption, 2 vols. (Hannover, 2001), though de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840 68, especially, n. 37, points out the weaknesses of Tischler’s claim that the work was intended as a critique in any way) and in his Translatio et Miracula SS Marcellini et Petri. See J.M.H. Smith, “Emending Evil Ways and Praising God's Omnipotence: Einhard and the uses of Roman martyrs,” in K. Mills and A. Grafton, eds., Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing, Studies in Comparative History (Rochester, NY, 2003).

73 The poem has been edited and translated recently: M. W. Herren, "The De Imagine Tetrici of Walahfrid Strabo: Edition and Translation," The Journal of Medieval Latin 1 (1991). All quotations and translations I use will be from this edition. An additional article, M. W. Herren, "Walahfrid Strabo's De Imagine Tetrici: An Interpretation," in Latin Culture and Medieval Germanic Europe. Proceedings of the First Germania Latina Conference held at the University of Groningen, 26 May 1989, ed. R. North and T. Hofstra (Groningen, 1992), provides a history and commentary on the poem. 127

Image 2 Vat. Reg. Lat. 124, fol. 8v 128

The poem itself is modeled on the Vergilian eclogue, but plays with the expectations that the genre indicates to the reader. It combines the eclogue genre with the speculum principis commonplace. This is the same tactic and the same formal model that Hrabanus Maurus used in the dedicatory depiction of Louis as a miles Christi in his

De laudibus sanctae crucis [Image 2], but now it is employed in a critical rather than a laudatory or exhortatory manner. Walafrid’s poem dates to 829/830, a year of turmoil for Louis the Pious and the Carolingian Empire. The poem postdates the re-allocation of land to include a kingdom for Charles, Louis’ son by his second wife, Judith, to whom

Walafrid Strabo had been appointed tutor, and foresees unrest between Louis’s elder sons and young Charles.74 Walafrid chooses the equestrian statue of Theoderic, imported to Aachen by Charlemagne, as the poem’s focal point and examines the history of the sculpture as a means of commenting on the Carolingian rulers.

The De Imagine Tetrici demonstrates how Roman objects and texts accumulated new symbolic meaning in their new medieval cultural context. The poet understands the history of the equestrian statue and how the symbolic intention of its original cultural context still informs the new interpretation. Walafrid Strabo acknowledges the accumulated interpretive history and then proceeds to built on it, introducing his own signa to the statue. Walafrid makes his moves within the text in three ways. First, he offers his own interpretation of the reception and history of the statue’s symbolic meanings. In this portion of the text, he opens up space for his critique of Carolingian politics and the court. Then he moves from his representation of history to the new assignation of meanings, which he provides through the Biblical parallels he draws for

74 The rebellion of Louis’ elder sons in 830 was primarily due to their resistance to the arrangement for young Charles’ inheritance, see J. Nelson, "The Last Years of Louis the Pious," in Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840), ed. Peter Godman and Roger Collins, 147-160 (Oxford, 1990), 147-51, and de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840, 31-44. This point is discussed in greater detail below. 129 members of Louis the Pious’s family. By shifting the symbolism from classical culture

(the statue and the literary genre of the poem) to Scriptural allusions, Walafrid makes his argument for the necessity of placing the Church and her servants at the center of

Carolingian politics.75

Walafrid opens his poem in a garden blooming with the emergence of spring in imitation of the pastoral setting of the Vergilian eclogues. The structure (structural allusion) leads the reader to expect a poem in praise of the salvific emperor who ushers in a Golden Age. But the poem, a dialogue between Strabus, who is shortly to appear before the emperor and does not know what to say, and his muse, Scintilla, transitions abruptly from traditional bucolic elements to earthy characterizations of contemporary political life. Scintilla answers Strabus’ description of the spring with an 18-line reply evenly divided between her description of the fortune of ancient poets and her lament about the current state of affairs.

Triste nemus testesque ferae timidaeque uolucres, Mens secura, procul furibundae crapula curae. At nos pro siluis, hederis, echone, coturno Immanes omni ferimus de parte tumultus, Et uix ipsa luto subducit pupula sese Stercoribusque nouisssma, pro pudor, omnis inhorret.

Theirs a sombre grove, wild beasts and shy birds to listen, Theirs was a mind free of worry, far from the madding cares and headaches. But instead of groves, ivy, echoes and fine phrases, Our lot is horrid commotion on every side. No sooner did the pupil of our eye raise itself from the mud And dung than it starts in horror at the latest crisis – shame!76

75 Bloom, Anxiety of Influence, 14, argues that a ‘strong’ poet can “read the parent-poem as to retain its terms, but to mean them in another sense.” The claim the later poet makes in so doing is that the parent poet did not go far enough (Bloom terms this “completion”) or that he ended up conveying the wrong meaning (“antithesis”). Here Walafrid seeks to demonstrate that a symbolic program that evokes classical culture alone is incomplete and that only the addition of proper Scriptural interpretations can redeem it.

76 Herren, "The De Imagine Tetrici of Walahfrid Strabo: Edition and Translation," lines 16-21. 130

Scintilla’s reply even sounds as sticky as the mire in which they find themselves:

Nudaque stercoribus sordescunt crura nigellis.77 By the end of the reply, the muse has not given Strabus much encouraging imagery to work with, but Strabus goes ahead with his questions. He asks why the equestrian statue was made (sit effigata). The muse’s answer returns to the very origins of the statue and to the historical figure of Theoderic.

Her presentation of the origins and history of the statue problematizes Charlemagne’s professed desire to recall through it, like Theoderic before him, Roman tradition and culture.

The statue at the center of the poem is shown to be as ambiguous in its new architectural context as the classical genre Walafrid has chosen is in its new literary and cultural milieu. Walafrid’s poem claims that the borrowed artifact retains meaning from its past context, and, furthermore, that this has something to reveal to its new

Carolingian audience about its current situation and meaning. Where a generation of courtiers have flocked, like birds, to the imperial palace, eager to ingratiate themselves with the new Frankish dynasty and bow to its authority, Walafrid points out that the imagery that undergirds the legitimacy of the Carolingians is far more telling than they suspect.78 He shows that the flawed conversion of the borrowed statue highlights the problem of the Carolingian program of renovatio imperii. Cedant magna tui, super et, figmenta colossi, Roma, he writes.79 Walafrid makes this anxiety a creative force, and his poem attaches a new interpretation to the Carolingian use of the statue: the tradition that Charlemagne takes from Rome should not obscure or push aside the Christian inheritance. Walafrid, who studied grammar under the tutelage of Hrabanus Maurus at

77 Walafrid’s word choice here is also a dig at Ermoldus Nigellus, a cleric and courtier whose reputation for obsequiousness in his courtly career, capped by his fawning poem in praise of the Emperor Louis written in the latter half of the 820s.

78 De Imag. Tet., 46-51, and again at 209-10, 227-28.

79 De Imag. Tet., 215-16. 131

Fulda, wanted to add a body of commentary to this piece of spolia to reinscribe it with a changed meaning. The image for the Carolingian empire that Walafrid attaches to the tradition of the statue is rooted in the Old Testament; in the encomiums sung by the muse Scintilla, Louis the Pious is Moses, and his sons are Joshua, Jonathan, and

Benjamin, and his wife, Judith, is Rachael.80 Though these panegyrics are situated in the structure of the classical eclogue, they depart from the classical portrayals of royal women that the eclogue traditionally contained. When Theodulf of Orléans wrote a poem in praise of Charlemagne, he constructed an image of the imperial household with allusions to Dido of Vergil’s Aeneid, not to Scriptural exemplars.81

The poetic genre used here helps convey the meaning of these Biblical parallels because it too, like the statue, is not exempt from the baggage of the past. Walafrid plays with the expectation that the poem will foretell a Golden Age by using imagery of the peaceable kingdom described in the Old Testament Book of the Prophet Isaiah.82 But at this moment in the poem, in Louis’ encomium, Scintilla reveals the savior, and it is not the emperor. Louis, as a Christian emperor, may rule over the Christian people, but he must honor the altithronum patrem, and, in turn, is eclipsed by the Church:

Hinc magnum Salomonis opus, hinc templa supremis Structuris aequanda micant, specularia subter Dant insigne nemus uiridique uolantia prato Murmura riuorum; ludunt pecudesque feraeque Uri cum ceruis, timidis cum caprea dammis.

Hence the great work of Solomon and temples of comparable structure sparkle, And in their window panes they mirror a fine grove, murmuring streams

80 De Imag. Tet., 94-161.

81 Theodulf of Orleans, Carmina XXV. Ad Carolum Regem, ed E Dümmler, MGH Poetae I, lines 78-106, which focuses heavily on classicizing allusions that depict the women as shining and glittering, bedecked in jewels, gold, and regal purple garments (cf. Aeneid 4.134-139). See also P. Godman and R. Collins, eds., Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840) (Oxford, 1990), 579-80 and P. Godman, Poets and Emperors: Frankish Politics and Carolingian Poetry (Oxford, 1987), 65ff.

82 De Imag Tet., 116-20. 132

Playing in a green meadow and wild beasts and tame cattle playing. Wild oxen play with stags, wild roe with antelope.83

The vision and promise of the Golden Age lie within the Church. When Strabus arrives before the imperial court, he is initially overwhelmed by the wealth and glamour that surround him, but recovers himself and realizes that he is not in the presence of a David or a Solomon; rather he sees before him ora sacri cornuta patris splendore corusco.84

The statue must be understood as a warning for the Frankish king; his duty is not to be resplendent in gold, the way Theoderic wished himself depicted in the statue, or even as

Louis’ father, Charlemagne, had had the luxury of doing in a more peaceful time.85

Instead, Louis must be a Moses, chosen by God to lead his chosen people through a time of crisis. But just as the promise of Israel lay just beyond Moses’ leadership ability, so too does the promise of peace and a Golden Age lie beyond Louis’ ability to bring it to fruition. Walafrid even chooses the image of Joshua for Louis’ eldest son, and the future emperor as decreed by the Ordinatio Imperii, in order to emphasize the point. In an interesting and revelatory inversion, the palace chaplain, Hilduin, is cast as Aaron, but

Hilduin, unlike his biblical counterpart is an idoloclast priest, who upholds the duties of his office.86

As crisis and unrest loomed among the nobility and within the imperial household, Walafrid’s poem sought to rein in the Christian and particularly the

83 Ibid.

84 This moment in the poem essentially describes Strabus’ movement from ‘weak’ imitator who is wont to idealize the past to a ‘strong’ poet, capable of identifying a flaw and working to rewrite the received tradition. Influence and tradition, for the strong poet, are not received, they are created, written and rewritten.

85 On Charlemagne’s image, cf. De Imag. Tet., 109-111.

86 Herren, "Walahfrid Strabo's De Imagine Tetrici: An Interpretation," 38-39 and De Imag. Tet., 209-220. The imagery is confusing, but perhaps Walafrid uses Aaron as a symbol for the priesthood and intends to reassure the reader that the weakness of the Biblical Aaron regarding the Golden Calf will not be repeated when it comes to the gilded images at the Carolingian palace. 133 ecclesiastical associations that had become attached to the imperial title.87 Louis’ tenure as emperor saw a significant increase in the administrative responsibilities of ecclesiastical leaders and an attendant increase in the wealth and power with which the emperor rewarded them. The archchaplain Hilduin was closely tied to the royal chancery, and therefore in a position to influence the affairs of state, accompanying

Louis on military campaigns, and serving as an adviser to Louis and the emperor’s representative to the notary-clerics of the chancery. Louis, for his part, received a status as Christian king that emphasized the union of his royal and ecclesiastical roles.88 Louis’ early work in Aquitaine and then in the Carolingian Empire as a whole encouraging monastic reform and increasing the role of the episcopate fed into the image of Louis as guardian of the Frankish Church, an image readily adopted and enhanced by his biographers.89 But the blurring of lines between ecclesiastical and royal leadership had become problematic in the latter half of the 820s in the face of military defeats and the increasing loyalty that disaffected regional nobles were wiling to offer to Louis’ sons.

Louis responded to military defeats by marshalling the resources at his disposal to amplify the theological associations of imperial rule and the divine authority associated with the imperial title. Louis had new coins laden with Christian imagery minted, he issued the Constitutio Romana, which assured papal rights in the Exarchate

87 On the Christian interpretation of kingship and the imperial title in the Carolingian period see J. Semmler, “Reichsidee und kirchliche Gesetzgebung,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 71, (1966), 37-65.

88 The ecclesiastical status of the Frankish Christian ruler and his dual role as a leader of the Christian empire and the Church within it has a well-established history in Frankish literature. Cf. J. George, “Poet as Politician: Venantius Fortunatus' Panegyric to King Chilperic,” JMH 15 (1989), 5-18; B. Brennan, “The Image of the Frankish Kings in the Poetry of Venantius Fortunatus,” JMH 10 (1984), 1-11; M.F. Hoeflich, “Between Gothia and Romania: The image of the king in the poetry of Venantius Fortunatus,” Res Publica Litterarum: Studies in the Classical Tradition 5 (1982), 123-36; and “Gregory of Tours and Bede: Their views on the personal qualities of kings,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 2 (1968), 125-33.

89 de Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814- 840, 16-24, 83-84. 134 of Ravenna, required the nobility to submit to papal authority and in turn required the pope, upon his consecration, to swear allegiance to the Carolingian emperor.90 In the

Admonitio ad omnes regni ordines of 825, Louis defined the office of emperor as a ministerium conferred on the ruler by divine authority and human ordination. It is from this ministerium, Louis further states, that all other offices and order derive their respective ministeria.91 The capstone to Louis’ efforts at linking divine and secular authority in the imperial title came with the conversion of the Danish king, Harald and his family. The family was baptized at Mainz with Louis’ own family serving as godparents. Until the end of the 820s, the monasteries and monks of the Carolingian

Empire still trusted in Louis’ faithfulness to their interests, and, conversely, were willing to place themselves and their resources at the service of the emperor. By the time

Walafrid Strabo came to court in 829, however, Louis willingness to distribute ecclesiastical and monastic lands to the lay nobility in exchange for loyalty had changed the monastic outlook. Monastics, and abbots in particular, who had come from aristocratic families themselves, were no longer being treated the way they had expected as noble churchmen and began to create for themselves a more distinct social space that involved (at least a symbolic) separation from the secular political sphere. Walafrid’s poem capitalizes on the elevation of Christian imagery and the centrality of Christian theology in the Carolingian definition of the imperial office to reassert the importance of

90 MGH, Cap., I, p. 322-24.

91 MGH, Cap.. I, p. 303-07, at 303: Sed quamquam summa huius ministerii in nostra persona consistere videtur, tamen et divina auctoritate et humana institutione ita per partes divisum esse cognoscitur, ut unusquisque vestrum in suo loco et ordine partem nostri ministerii habere cognoscatur; unde apparet, quod ego omnium vestrum admonitor esse debeo, et omnes vos nostri adiutores esse debetis. See also, Jong, The Penitential State: Authority and Atonement in the Age of Louis the Pious, 814-840 37 and K.F. Werner, “Hludovicus Augustus: Gouverner l’empire chrétien – Idées et réalités” in Godman and Collins, eds., Charlemagne's Heir: New Perspectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840) , 3-123, at 87-89, who notes «Dans l’Église et dans le monde, tous ceux qui exercent une fonction, ont reçu de ce fait une part du «ministère» de l’empereur, dont celui est investi de la summa. Tous ces hommes étant parternaires d’un seul ministère.» Werner goes on to argue that this document marks a key shift in Carolingian administration, from «un état de fait» to «un état de droit». 135 monastics and ecclesiastics as religious figures and the necessity of cultivating religious life for its own sake within the empire. If Louis once more asserted his protection and preferrment of monastic lands and offices, Walafrid argues in the De imagine Tetrici, the imperial dignity would be enhanced. But the emperor would have to recognize that he was at the service of the Christian Church and not the other way round.

Walafrid’s poem drips with sarcasm and inverted meanings ooze out of the lines.

It is difficult to know where to take the poet at his word and where to assume inversion.

What is not in doubt is the poet’s skill at constructing an image and impression of the emperor and his court. Walafrid’s poem has added to the tradition of the equestrian statue a new layer of associations and changed how the statue signifies to its audience.

The statue now symbolizes at once the fragility of kingship and the importance of the

Christian Church in the Carolingian world and the Church’s ability to fix some of the problems Louis the Pious has encountered. It also serves as a warning to the king not to neglect the protection of the dignity of religious life in his empire. The Frankish Church emerges from the poem as a source of strength within the realm to which the Louis might turn for stability and strength.

The poem blames Louis’ familial troubles and the rebelliousness of the nobility in part on the Carolingian’s misunderstanding of their role, symbolized by their misinterpretation of the imported statue. In Walafrid’s interpretation, the Church is the bulwark of stability and the Carolingians would do well to look there for support, instead, perhaps, to the aristocracy.92 But it goes beyond assigning blame to the Carolingian dynasty, and uses the statue as a representation of the human institution of kingship.

The imperial statue had been removed from its original context, placed in a new setting and assigned a new symbolic meaning in the Christian Carolingian context. But in their

92 Beginning in the 820s, Louis the Pious frequently gave church offices and monastic land holdings to noblemen in exchange for loyalty and military support, by the late 820s, Louis sons were doing the same. 136 resituation of the artifact and in their reinterpretation of kingship in a Christian context, the Carolingian rulers failed to heed the lessons offered by the demise of the model of kingship that the statue first represented.

Walafrid notes this interpretive problem in order to clear space for a reinterpretation of the statue, a central image in the Aachen courtyard and a symbol of the imperial office. Walafrid capitalizes on the work of the first generation of

Carolingian scholars, who had made language and literary work a powerful means of ensuring influence. Walafrid’s virtuoso performance in the De Imagine Tetrici leaves obscure some of its insinuations, but demonstrates indubitably the importance of interpretive power at court. The poem proves the value of the monastic ability to use language and literature to create a sphere of influence in a court whose infrastructure favored the aristocracy for their ability to provide military and monetary support to the emperor.93 Walafrid’s poem is an example of how literary works produced by the third generation of Carolingian monastic scholars moved from primarily cooperation and praise of the Carolingian ruler to instruments that could be employed to critique royal policies or actions and utilized in competition with the established avenues of access to power dominated by the lay aristocracy.

93 It became more imperative for monastics to wield influence at court under Louis the Pious because in 817, the emperor had the Constitutio de servitio monasteriorum drafted. This document laid out which monasteries owed the emperor gifts and military service, which were obliged to provide only gifts in support of the emperor and his efforts, and which monasteries, owing to their size, holdings, and income, owed neither gifts nor military support, but were obliged to pray for the emperor and the stability of the empire: “Anno incarnationis Domini nostri Jesu Christi 817, Hludowicus serenissimus augustus divina ordinante providentia, conventum fecit apud Aquis sedem regiam, episcoporum, abbatum, seu totius senatus Francorum; ubi inter ceteras dispositiones imperii statuit atque constitutum scribere fecit, quae monasteria in regno vel imperio suo dona et militiam facere possunt, quae sola dona sine militia, quae vero nec dona nec militiam, sed solas orationes pro salute imperatoris vel filiorum eius et stabilitate imperii.” PL 97, 423B-438A. Additionally, letters penned by Lupus of Ferrières both as secretary to Abbot Odo and after he succeeded to the abbacy at Ferrières indicate that military service and the imperial appropriation and gifts of abbatial land in exchange for aristocrats’ loyal military service made life quite difficult for the monastery. See, chapter 4, below. On the role of gifts and military service as a form of taxation in Carolingian administration see T. Reuter, "Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 35 (1985), 75-94, at 81-86. 4 The Monastery & the Textual Community

The 830s were a decade of political turmoil and internal struggles for the

Carolingian ruler. Monasteries keenly felt the effects of the political instability and the weakening power of the emperor. The letters of Lupus, a contemporary of Walafrid

Strabo and abbot of Ferrières from 840 until his death two decades later, provide an invaluable record of his monastery’s struggles during the 830s and 840s. As abbot,

Lupus had to simultaneously navigate the shifting balance of power within the royal family, fulfill the demands of imperial military service, and ensure that he had procured the means to offer dona, or gifts due in support of the emperor, all of which were particularly difficult due to the loss of an income-providing dependent house and its land holdings, which had been given to a nobleman in return for loyalty to Louis the Pious’ eldest son Lothar. All the while, Lupus was trying to maintain his monastic role as scholar and teacher, as well as be a spiritual leader to the monks under his care at

Ferrières. Ferrières was a mid-sized abbey in Burgundy; it was not amongst the largest and most famous of Carolingian monasteries, but it was big enough and wealthy enough to have been required to provide both monetary and military support to the Carolingians

137 138 in Louis the Pious’ 817 Constitutio de servitio monasteriorum, alongside the more renowned abbeys of Flavigny and Corbie.1

The gifts and military support due to the emperor became burdensome after

Ferrières lost its daughter house at St-Josse in 829 or 830. The house was located in northern France, in a region where familial ties to Louis the Pious, his second wife

Judith, and Louis’ son by her, Charles, were strong. The Ordinatio imperii of 817, in which Louis the Pious divided the Carolingian realm into kingdoms his three sons by his first wife Irmingard, allotted the northern regions to his eldest son Lothar.2 During a rebellion against their father, Lothar and his brothers, Louis and Pippin gained the support of a rather large swath of nobles from across the Carolingian Empire, and St-

Josse was transferred from Ferrières’ control as a means of securing one of these alliances. If Lupus’ letters are any indication, St-Josse was a wealthy dependency on which Ferrières relied heavily for food and various other necessities, in addition to

1 PL, 97, 425A. For more on the history of Corbie, see D. Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance (Sigmaringen, 1990), and B. Kasten, Adalhard von Corbie: die Biographie eines karolingischen Politikers und Klostervorstehers, Studia Humaniora, vol. 3 (Düsseldorf, 1986) for a study of Corbie’s own political ties and the effects of dynastic succession and instability on that monastery see Kasten, Adalhard von Corbie . Less is available on Flavigny, but C. B. Bouchard, The Cartulary of Flavigny, 717-1113, Medieval Academy Books, vol. 99 (Cambridge, MA, 1991) has edited the cartulary of the abbey and this provides details on the life, size, and influence of the abbey in the Carolingian period.

2 Louis’ first wife, Irmingard, died in 818 and he subsequently married Judith. Charles was born in 823. Judith was tireless in her efforts to secure a patrimony for Charles and pursued alliances vigorously to this end: Her mother received the abbey of Chelles in Neustria, her brother Rudolf St-Riquier and Jumièges, also in the same region, among other offices and benefices. Judith’s aggressive politicking on young Charles’ behalf may have done much to cause Louis’ three older sons to rebel against him in 829-30. See L. Halphen, Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire, trans. G.de Nie, Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. 3 (Amsterdam, 1977), 175-176, 180-182 and J. Nelson, "The Last Years of Louis the Pious," in Charlemagne's Heir: New Perscpectives on the Reign of Louis the Pious (814-840), ed. P. Godman and R. Collins (Oxford, 1990), 147-160, 150- 154. Both the life of Louis the Pious written by the anonymous Astronomer and Nithard’s Histories, though favorable accounts toward Louis the Pious, cannot hide the threat that Judith’s machinations and influence over Louis posed to the emperor’s older sons. In the Astronomer’s account, the sons went after Judith first. Threatening her with torture and death, they tried to persuade her to convince Louis to abdicate the imperial crown and retire to monastic life and they forced her into the monastery and tonsured her brothers. So much space is dedicated to their treatment of her, in both the Astronomer’s account and in Nithard’s, that clearly she and her family exerted a formidable influence on imperial affairs. 139 benefiting from its income.3 The return of the property was the main focus of the monastery’s political activities throughout the 830s and 840s. The fortunes of Ferrières,

St-Josse, Odo, Lupus’ predecessor as abbot, and Lupus himself provide a well- documented example of a sea-change in the role of monasteries in Carolingian political life.

The earliest letters in Lupus’ collection come from the roughly eight years he spent studying at Fulda under Hrabanus Maurus (828/9-836). Up to this point, he had been educated at Ferrières, where his parents had sent him with the intent that he embark upon an ecclesiastical or religious career.4 Fulda offered Lupus both an incomparable intellectual opportunity and a group of eminent ecclesiastics with whom he would establish important friendships: Marcward of Prüm, Louis, abbot of St-Denis, who would later become the chancellor to Charles the Bald, and the heterodox theologian and rebel monk Gottschalk, among others. The connections that Lupus made at Fulda would be the most important and influential correspondents, as well as his closest friends, throughout his career and life. Early in his education at Fulda, Lupus began a correspondence with Einhard, asking him for books and soliciting explanations for grammatical questions he had encountered, and eventually demonstrating his rhetorical skill in letters of consolation after the death of Einhard’s wife. These early letters show how central learning and study were to Lupus’ monastic training and how much he enjoyed this work.

In 836, Lupus returned to Ferrières, now under the direction of one Abbot Odo.

By now, Lupus’ reputation as a scholar was growing, and he had become known beyond

3 Epp. 30, 42, 45, 54.

4 See T.F.X. Noble “Lupus of Ferrières in His Carolingian Context,” After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History, ed. A.C. Murray (Toronto, 1998), 233-34. Noble points out that that Lupus’ name may demonstrate his parents’ hopes for him; many of his kinsmen with the same name went on to obtain Frankish bishoprics. 140

Fulda and Ferrières. The abbot of the monastery at Hersfeld, not far from Fulda, requested that Lupus write a vita of St. Wigibert just as his course of study at Fulda was ending, and Immo, bishop of Noyen inquired about his studies at Fulda shortly after his return to Ferrières.5 In the fall of that year, some of Lupus’ friends,6 also undoubtedly interested in the career of the promising young scholar, took him on a visit to the court of

Louis the Pious. Lupus evidently impressed Louis’ wife, the Empress Judith during this visit, perhaps owing as much to the strategic importance of Ferrières’ location in her efforts to secure for her son Charles a share in the Frankish kingship and realms as to his reputation for learning.7

A year later, Lupus found himself back at court at the invitation of Empress

Judith, succeeding Walafrid Strabo, who had been appointed abbot at Reichenau, as tutor to Louis’ son Charles.8 He seemed excited about the prospect that gradus

5 Loup de Ferrières, Correspondence, ed. and trans. L. Levillain, (Paris, 1927), Ep. 6-7. Lupus’ Life of Wigbert is examined in Chapter 4, below.

6 The term is Lupus’: Superiore anno, annitentibus amicis, in praesentiam imperatoris deductus sum et ab eo atque regina benigne omnino exceptus (Ep. 11).

7 Evidence abounds for Judith’s efforts to secure loyalties for her son. Her mother received the abbey of Chelles in Neustria, her brother Rudolf, St. Riquier and Jumièges (Francia and Neustria, respectively), her brother Conrad received, St. Gall in Alemannia and secured a marriage with Lothar’s sister-in-law, and her sister married Louis the German. She also pursued noble alliances, including that of Bernard of Barcelona, whose wife wrote the Handbook for William, trans. Carol Neel (Washington, DC, 1991), in the early 840s, and who was rewarded for loyal service to the Emperor with the countship of Septimania in 828. The abbot of Reichenau (Alemannia) was appointed as Charles the Bald’s tutor, Walafrid Strabo, whom Lupus may have known from early in his time at Fulda. Any individual who came to court, especially in order to educate or otherwise influence the future generation of rulers, was chosen in order to create or solidify important social ties with the regna over which their sons would later preside. For example, shortly after drawing up the Ordinatio imperii in 817, Louis the Pious invited a well- connected Bavarian nobleman to court as the new teacher of Louis the German. See E.J. Goldberg, Creating a Medieval Kingdom: Carolingian Kingship, Court Culture, and Aristocratic Society Under Louis of East Francia (840-76). PhD Diss. University of Virginia, 1998. 32-33. By appointing this important Bavarian magnate as his young son’s teacher, Louis the Pious hoped to create strong ties of loyalty between Louis the German and the nobility of his sub-kingdom.

8 Ep. 11: “et nunc, hoc est X kalendas octobrium, indictione I, ad palatium, regina, quae plurimum valet, evocante, promoveo.” 141 dignitatis aliquis9 would be offered to him on account of Judith’s influence, if somewhat unsure of what such an office would entail. He wrote to one of his students assuring him that he would continue to teach him and expressed excitement about the prospect of further studies at the court. Lupus’ vision of the role of a court tutor was rooted in the experience and work of the first generation of court scholars, such as Alcuin and Paul the

Deacon, whose own intellectual and literary pursuits flourished under Charlemagne’s patronage. Lupus went on to say that if he did not receive a court appointment, he would gladly continue to tutor as long as his student wished.10

The letters to his student betray Lupus’ youthful exuberance at the prospect of a career as a courtier and how unaware Lupus was concerning the burdens of a court appointment. Lupus assumed his duties would be essentially teaching and tutoring. He saw no conflict between his monastic calling, which he defined primarily as a life focused on learning and study, and his duties at court. He may have considered his time at court and away from the monastery to be a productive and necessary exile, just as Alcuin had styled his own move from the cloister at York to the Carolingian court two generations earlier.11 Lupus did not seem to mind the prospect of living outside the monastic cloister,

9 Ep. 11.

10 Ep. 11: Quod (i.e. his receiving a court appointment) si divina exuberante gratia evenerit, non dubites ilico te arcessendum, ut una permissu imperatoris degentes, communium studiorum exercitatione jucundissima perfruamur. Sin autem soes notras eventus eluserit, rescribe an velis me per amicos petere ut ab imperatore locus tibi quidem reddatur in monasterio tuo, apud me autem studendi gratia, quatenus uterque nostrum voluerit, conferatur. And again, Ep. 12: Quamquam, si nulla mei status mutatio provenerit, satius est ut apud me sis et in Virgiliana lectione, ut optime proficias, — abundabis enim otio meaque prona in te diligentia, — quam temet ipso utens magistro non tam fructuose quam laboriose proficias. Deo enim largiente, et possum et adesse tibi incredibiliter cupio.

11 Upon leaving York, Alcuin wrote his O mea cella, a poem lamenting his departure from York for the Carolingian court. The poem was probably written after his arrival at Aachen. See C. Newlands, “Alcuin’s Poem of Exile: O Mea Cella” Mediaevalia 11 (1985), 19-45. The work is divided into two halves; the first part recalls all the sweetness of the cloister and laments his departure and the second half of the poem is a meditation on the ephemeral nature of the secular world and a prayer that he, Alcuin, remain steadfast in his monastic outlook when faced with the affairs of the court. 142 perhaps because a number of other court scholars, such as Alcuin and Walafrid Strabo had been monastics. This naiveté, however, would not last long (nor would his excitement for royal appointments); Lupus had felt, already in his short time back at

Ferrières, the weight of administrative duties and how they imposed upon his studies.12

Though he did not receive the appointment expected at his 837 visit to court,

Lupus could not return to Ferrières and devote himself to teaching and study as he had hoped. He found himself burdened with administrative duties whenever he was home.

Si subitaneam nobis tuam attulisses praesentiam, he writes to one of his friends,

infertilis profecto laboris retulisses dispendium. Namque ita me variis et inevitabilibus involutum offendisses negotiis ut vix intra multos dies una hora vacuas tibi aures praebere potuissem.

If you had arrived here unexpectedly, you certainly would have put yourself to unnecessary trouble. Indeed you would have found me involved in so many unavoidable activities that I could scarcely have given you one hour of free time for many days.13

Lupus found that life in the cloister, which he had hoped would be devoted to study and teaching, was too often interrupted by political concerns and administrative duties vital to the preservation of the monastic endeavor at Ferrières.

By working as Odo’s secretary until his own appointment as abbot of Ferrières in late 840, Lupus learned intimately the political demands that an abbacy required and the importance of currying favor with the king. Not only was Odo pressed into military service in order to maintain for Ferrières the king’s favor, but the monastery had to

12 Lupus expressed this frustration in a letter to a friend who had written with grammatical questions. He replied: Si tanta facilitate discuti possent a quoquam quanta moventur quaestiones, olim ad consummatam studiosi quique sapientiam evasissent. Nunc, litterarum studiis paene obsoletic, quotus quisque inveniri possit qui de magistrorum imperitia, librorum penuria, otii denique inopia merito non quaeratur? Quo minus indignari mihi debes si perexiguum otii, quod mihi vix optingit, indagandis quae nesciam, quam ventilandis quae jam consecutus sum, judicem expendendum.

13 Ep. 10. The translations of Lupus’ letters in this chapter are from The Letters of Lupus of Ferrières, trans. G.W. Regenos, (The Hague, 1966). 143 house visiting nobility, whose entourages proved a costly burden.14 Lupus again appeals to chancellor Louis on Odo’s behalf to ask for relief from the financial strain of housing and supporting one (otherwise unknown) nobleman, Zachariam abbatem. He writes,

Habeat igitur vestra insignis industria tenuitatis nostrae considerationem et dignetur elaborare ut vel ad locum unde ad nos venit vel ad alium quemlibet jam dirigatur, quia, ut rem vobis ut est simpliciter fateamur, non mediocriter nos gravant expensae quae illius hominibus tribuuntur. Unde per vos sublevari deposcimus, ut sit unde aliis ad nos confluentibus hospitalitatis gratiam impendere valeamus.

Will you therefore please use your good offices out of consideration for our straitened circumstances to see that this man is now sent to the place from which he came or to any other place you please, for to confess the simple truth the support of his men is no small burden to us. We beg you then to help us so that we may have the resources to grant hospitality to others who come here in large numbers.15

Weary of military campaigns and financially burdened by the imposition of guests, Odo continued his politicking on behalf of Ferrières because he was fully aware of the importance of undertaking such tasks:

Ceterum fama versatur inter nos clericos palatii diversorum coenobiorum sibi dominium optare atque poscere, quibus nulla sit alia cura nisi ut suae avaritiae oppressione servorum Dei satisfaciant.

Now there is a report circulating in our monastery that the clerks of the palace desire and even demand control of the various monasteries and that their only concern is to satisfy their own personal greed by oppressing the servants of God.16

14 Epp. 15, 16.

15 Ep. 14.

16 Ep. 16. Lupus, writing for Odo, goes on to appeal to the Louis regional loyalties and his ties with the scribe himself from Fulda, saying, Unde in hac parte suppliciamus vestram nobis vigilare prudentiam ut tenuitas nostra per vos esse valeat tuta. Namque, quia haud procul a nobis educati estis, apud nos quoque fuisitis, qualita monasterii nostri vos minime latet: ubi, preter studium religionis, quo sibi nomen inter alia coenobia vindicavit, non est quod expetendum sit ei, qui si magni facit, nisi forte tam sacrilegus quis inveniatur, qui stipendia Deo servientium in suo audeat usus convertere et eorum inopiam suam luxuriam facere. This competition for influence and criticism of clerics at the Carolingian court becomes a common theme in monastic writings in the 830s. Walafrid’s De Imagine Tetrici has a particularly scathing allusion to Ermoldus Nigellus, an Aquitanian monk at Louis’ court, whose efforts at advancing his position and influence knew no bounds – he wrote a sycophantic epic poem on the life of Louis 144

Abbots had a great deal more difficulty winning and wielding political influence than the clerics and nobles at the palace, who were constantly in the presence of the king. Abbots like Odo had to rely on appeals to friends, such as Charles’ chancellor, to ensure that

Ferrières was protected.17 Odo spent the months between Louis the Pious’ death in June

840 and his eventual dismissal in November of the same year, trying to ally himself with whichever royal son he believed would provide most favorably for the monastery at

Ferrières.18 In the end, his political manoeuvering cost him the faith of Charles the Bald and his office as abbot.

Lupus’ efforts, both as Odo’s secretary and after he had succeeded to the abbacy himself, to ensure the security and stability of Ferrières and its monks influenced his view of monastic life, the role of an abbot and the role of a monastic teacher. His letters reveal his struggle to find the time for study he considered so important to monastic life in the face of his abbatial responsibilities. Although he never ceases to pursue his scholarly work and he fits in advice to students and maintains an active book exchange whenever circumstances permit, he comes to see the role of the abbot as a bridge between the monastic cloister and the world at large. Lupus was aware that the abbot’s role as protector of the monks and courtier to the king put him at a disadvantage compared to the nobility because closeness to the king, what Gerd Tellenbach termed the Pious in order to regain imperial favor after being exiled for his loyalty to Louis’ rebellious son Pippin of Aquitaine.

17 Lupus, in fact, may have been chosen as secretary in part because of the connections he had to high-ranking clerics from his time at Fulda; many of the people with whom he corresponds on Odo’s behalf are men with whom he had become acquianted at Fulda. See, for example, Epp. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20.

18 See, for example, Epp. 18, 19. Lupus wrote the following in Odo’s name: Nos autem, in quodam meditullio positi, fluctuamus incerti, dum deprehendere non valemus, quinam potissimum regionem nostram sibi debeat vindicare. Namque, sicut relatio vestrorum hominum declaravit, varia hinc fertur opinio. Tamen suppliciter vestram poscimus paternitatem ut, si consensus omnium in Lotharium pronior fuerit et apud eum, sicut optamus et credimus, divina vobis locum ad servorum Dei utilitatem concesserit clementia, memores nostri esse non dedignetum potestis, a nostra parvitate, opitulante Dei gratia, propulsare (Ep. 18). 145

Königsnähe, often was a key factor in the making of a Carolingian courtier.19 The itinerance of the royal court, the cost of travel and gifts for the king, and the importance of stability in monastic life all conspired to make Lupus’ job difficult. In some of his earlier letters, Lupus is at pains to assure his correspondents that he has recently seen and spoken with the king and that he is faithfully carrying out orders that he had received.20 His letters also indicate that he struggled with both the time he was away from Ferrières and the impact of these absences on his duties as abbot and alternately with the opportunities lost during the time he was forced to be away from the royal court.21

Lupus’ letter collection traces a shift in focus from the mid-830s, when Louis the

Pious had seemingly recovered from the first rebellion of his sons and the nobility (829-

19 G. Tellenbach, Königtum und Stämme in der Werdezeit des deutschen Reiches (Weimar, 1939). See also R. McKitterick, The Frankish Kingdoms under the Carolingians, 751-987 (New York, 1983), J. Nelson, Charles the Bald (London, 1992), ch 2, and T.F.X. Noble, “Lupus of Ferrières in his Carolingian Context,” After Rome’s Fall, ed. A.C. Murray (Toronto, 1998), 240-41. The administration of such a vast area as the Carolingian Empire depended entirely on the loyalty and support of the king’s subjects. Local nobility in the most distant regions commanded loyalty from the people in and around their own land holdings and held a great deal of power in those areas. In order to enforce royal authority throughout the kingdom, Carolingians employed two main strategies: on one hand, they employed a body of clerics and lay nobles as local administrators and in exchange for service and loyalty granted them offices and land holdings, and on the other hand, the Carolingian rulers maintained an itinerant royal court that held semi-annual assemblies at locations throughout the empire. The assemblies determined the governance of the empire, and considered military, fiscal, and religious matters. They were also a stage for a more practical intercourse between the king and his people: attendees were to bring gifts and could receive honores or beneficia – titles, offices, or land in return for their loyalty and service.

20 Epp. 24, 26, 27, 28, 30. Also (Ep. 22, written in 840) Lupus takes care to assure the king, now Charles the Bald, that his prolonged absence from the royal court does not indicate any disloyalty, particularly in light of the feuding over kingships and territories between the sons of Louis the Pious: Excellentissimo domino, judicioque sapientium multis et maximis regnis dignissimo, summa veneratione nominando, inclyto regi Carolo devotissimus per omnia Lupus.

Licet inevitabilis necessitas me ad tempus vestris aspectibus subtrahat, sic tamen animus meus vobis agglutinatus est, ut vos et vestra semper in oculis habeam, et, ut absque adulationis fuco verum vobis confitear, vix comprehensibili amore complectar. Nam cur ab omnibus bonis debeatis amari facile in vobis eminet. Unde quantum capio, quantum sufficio, quantum intelligo, vobis fidelis sum.

21 Epp. 12, 28, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39. Several letters express Lupus’ concern that he is neglecting his students and his duties as teacher in his prolonged absences, and several are concerned with the vulnerability of Ferrières to “seculars who would like to overrun our monastery” in his absence. 146

30) and the Empire returned to a semblance of order and the emperor restored to his rightful position of authority, through the division of the Carolingian empire amongst

Lothar, Louis the German, and Charles and the military and political unrest of the 840s.

In the earliest letters of the collection, Lupus, though torn between his abbatial responsibilities inside and outside of the monastery, has faith in the traditional structures of power, authority, and stability. Later in the collection, Lupus shifts his efforts away from securing royal favor and protection and begins to cultivate a narrower circle of friends and patrons culled primarily from his schoolmates at Fulda. These men now occupied important bishoprics and abbacies in the kingdom of Charles the Bald –

Hincmar, bishop of Rheims; Louis, abbot of St-Denis and chancellor to Charles;

Marcward, abbot of Prüm, and Gottschalk of Orbais, to name several key correspondents. Lupus writes to Hincmar in 845 that in his closeness to Charles the

Bald, he has “received as a gift from God the opportunity to help good people at the court of the prince, so that what they do not have in themselves they may possess in you.”22

The importance of kinship networks amongst the Carolingian aristocracy in reinforcing loyalties and preserve stability in Carolingian politics is well-established.23

Lupus’ letters reveal that monastics and clerics felt a similar bond and that monastic or religious ties between men throughout the Carolingian world created a sense of duty to ensure the rights and privileges of their fellow monks and abbots over against the interests of the nobility. As a shift in the policy of Carolingian kings resulted in the

22 Ep 43: Cum tantis divinae gratiae muneribus abundetis, ultro vos cogitare apud iuvandi bonos facultatem divinitus accepisse, ut quod in se non habent, in vobis possideant. Lupus goes on to note the role that Hincmar’s education and religious profession play in his responsibility to a fellow monk and peppers the letter with quotations from Scripture. He closes the letter as follows: Vos autem interim mihi quaeso et quibuscunque similia patientibus Mardonchaei constantiam, Esther pietatem impendite; ut hostes famulorum Dei vestra diligentia, imo divina virtute, non ut tempore cuius mentionem facio, as suam perniciem, sed ad perpetuam salutem vincantur et opprimatur.

23 See C.B. Bouchard, "Family Structure and Family Consciousness Among the Aristocracy in the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries," Francia 14 (1986), 639-58; R. Le Jan, Famille et pouvoir dans le monde franc (VIIe-Xe siècle): essai d'anthropologie sociale (Paris, 1995). 147 handing over lands from bishoprics and monasteries as benefices to local nobility and threatened monasteries and dioceses with the same insolvency as Lupus was experiencing at Ferrières, the religious orders of Carolingian society began to formalize and solidify bonds that had been created even as far back as their school days in order to maintain a network of influence strong enough to compete with the nobility. A number of Lupus’ letters to other monks remind them that they “have received as a gift from

God” a position of influence, and that they have been “promoted to a high position and made a friend of the king for the good of the whole church,” and again, that they be mindful of “the favor which you have received from God, for as you well know, you should pay back with interest the talent which you have received from the Lord” (cf. Mt.

25:14-20).24 The ties between monastic communities as confraternities of prayer, which dated back to the mid-eighth century, naturally led to the close association between monasteries in the face of threats to their land holdings and solvency.25 In a brief survey of monastic Libri memoriales, or books of the dead to be prayed for during monastic liturgies, McKitterick notes that some of the codices containing these memorial records set the names “within elaborately decorated arcades which resemble canon tables in their layout” and as such, the “codex embodies the abbey...in which it was embedded.”26

As the lists of names grew to include members of monastic communities beyond the walls of an individual monastery, the architectural setting containing the text continued to visually signify the unity of the monastic community under a single roof.

24 Epp. 43, 48, 71. He also refers to his old friendships often in letters asking for favors or influence: Cf. Epp. 43, 45, 64, 70.

25 O-G. Oexle and K Schmid, “Voraussetzungen und Wirkung des Gebetbundes von Attigny,” Francia 2 (1975), 71-122. The prayer communities that formed between monasteries following the Synod of Attigny can be documented through Libri memoriales, in which monasteries recorded the names of the dead for whom they prayed. As networks of prayer confraternities grew throughout the Frankish world, the books would contain larger and larger lists from a larger circle of associated communities.

26 R. McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge, 2004), 162-172. 148

Furthermore, by the 820s, the decades-old practice of recording the names of laity from the locality surrounding the monastery alongside the names of monks was losing ground, and these libri were predominately, if not exclusively, filled with names of monks.27

Walafrid Strabo’s poem, De Imagine Tetrici, examined in the previous chapter, is an example of the beginnings of competition with the aristocracy for influence.28 But

Lupus’ literary career demonstrates a more marked closing of ranks and an effort to create an empire-wide monastic community to compete with the increasing power the nobility could wield over the weakening Carolingian kings. Lupus’ career also tracks a shift in the focus of efforts at monastic preservation from reliance on the stability of imperial governance and the power and person of the Carolingian ruler, to an increased focus on stability within the monastic community. This came largely in the form of withdrawal from the political scene of the imperial court(s), and an increased focus on intermural monastic relationships. Monastic education and literary training was the driving force behind the reshaping of the Carolingian monastic sense of community and of the monks’ separation from the lay aristocracy and withdrawal from secular affairs.

* * *

The monks engaged in writing the texts that defined and shaped their tradition and community understood that their efforts depended on education in a monastic context. Monastic education was not merely about transmitting knowledge of grammar and the Scriptures or training scholars and administrators; it was first and foremost aimed at passing on a discipline of life, at handing on to the student the virtues and

27 Ibid., 165, McKitterick uses the Reichenau prayer book as an example.

28 Nelson, "The Last Years of Louis the Pious," 147-59, points out that during the 820s, the land and wealth of the Frankish Church and abbeys attracted the interest of the lay aristocracy. Louis the Pious granted church and monastic lands to lay nobles during this time because the empire’s borders had ceased to expand and benefices now had to come from within the present realm. And although churchmen, like Lupus, did clamor for the return of properties in the 830s, they began to “take a lower profile.” Nelson argues that this was “because they had learned that a ruler’s undisputed authority offered their only real chance of protection” (155-56). 149 qualities of the teacher. Monastic education aimed at creating a “textual community” that depended not only on the existence of a canon of texts, but also on an “interpretive methodology articulated in a body of commentary which accompanied the texts and instituted their authority.”29 In Carolingian monastic education, an understanding of the interpretive framework came from the lived experience of the monastery. Carolingian education, in this sense, was as much a charismatic as an intellectual model. A teacher passed on a way of life and taught by his own example a curriculum of Christian virtue in which study, learning, reading and writing were disciplines aimed at perfecting those virtues.30

The importance of the model teacher in monastic education served several key purposes within the community. The teacher operated in what K.F. Morrison has termed the “mimetic tradition of reform,” which, Morrison argues, was a long-standing convention in Western education, dating back to Antiquity. According to Morrison, mimesis functions by mediating the space between asymmetries. In the case of

Carolingian monastic education, the teacher, whom can refer both to the master in the monastic classroom and to textual constructions of the holy man, is an exemplar of monastic life against which the student measures himself. In this way, the monk’s education is just as much molding himself in the image of the teacher as it is about mastering the disciplines of grammar, Scriptural commentary and so forth. The mimetic

29 M. Irvine, The Making of Textual Culture: 'grammatica' and literary theory, 350-1100, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, vol. 19 (Cambridge, 1994), 15.

30 C. S. Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideas in Medieval Europe, 950- 1200 (Philadelphia, 1994), 22-23, notes that “[t]he formation of character through a life shared by students and master is part and parcel of education in antiquity and the earlier Middle Ages.” To this I would also add that monasticism from its earliest also emphasized the importance of a student submitting to his master, who is chosen on account of his surpassing holiness in order to learn the pace and order of monastic life. The De litteris colendis notes that knowledge is prior to conduct (prius tamen est nosse quam facere), but the acquisition of knowledge, learning or study, is not education in the narrow sense of teacher lecturing and students taking notes, but rather education is a way of life, a conversatio and the scola is a group of individuals who share common customs and interests. The way in which the word scola is used in the RSB shows us that a common or shared way of life was considered a critical element in education. 150 aspect of monastic education also promoted the goal of monastic unity or self-denial because it encouraged young monks to strive for “sameness” over individual intellectual achievement.31 The young monk imitated his master whose exemplary holiness was measured by his own conformity to a literary ideal that held up earlier generations as models of monastic perfection – making Carolingian rewritings of earlier saints’ vitae a fundament of monastic education. The final and most politically valuable consequence of this sort of education was that the emphasis on unity led monastics, who were by and large from aristocratic families, to identify more with other monastics and with monastic interests across the Carolingian world than with their own families and local kin groups and their political interests.

Alcuin outlined this method of education in the earliest reform documents he authored for Charlemagne. In the royal document that first outlined the Carolingian monastic educational reform under Charlemagne, De litteris colendis, training in literacy and training in virtue are presumed to be parallel intentions: sicut regularis norma honestatem morum, ita quoque docendi et discendi instantia ordinet et ornet seriem verborum, ut, qui deo placere appetunt recte vivendo, ei etiam placere non neglegant recte loquendo. The letter draws an equivalency between regularis norma and docendia et discendi instantia and also between recte vivendo and recte loquendo. Observance of the rule imparts the discipline and the desire needed to learn and the desire to please

God through moral rectitude is the impetus for proper speech. The letter describes the qualities of a teacher thus: interius devotos et exterius doctos castosque bene vivendo et scolasticos bene loquendo. Here too, the interior life of the man is prior to external indications of his learning, a result of his virtue.

31 See K. F. Morrison, The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton, 1982), 17. 151

Monastic reformers of the eighth century were able to draw on a long, well- articulated tradition of a monastic aesthetic of the body.32 The monastic aesthetic of the body was rooted in self-denial and the body became a symbol of the corporate unity of monks. This aspect of monastic education also mirrored the classical educational tradition, in which discipline and self-mastery were at the root of the curriculum. In the classical world, asceticism and self-discipline were the values of the elite; the physical appearance and behavior of an educated man set him apart from the rest of society and linked him to a class of elites. Elizabeth Clark notes that characteristic of classical sexual values and ethics “reappear in transmuted form in monastic literature” beginning in the fourth century.33

The medieval monastic reinterpretation of the ethics and aesthetics of the educated elite constitutes another example of a “strong” response to classical culture. I locate this “strong” response in the early Middle Ages because the early Christian and

Patristic writers tended to, at least rhetorically if not in fact, reject classical learning and express distaste and mistrust for the culture of education in antiquity. Furthermore, early Christian monasticism focused on ascetic practices such as sexual abstinence and dietary restriction that were not novel in the classical world, but were reoriented to new goals and given new meaning in the Christian context. In both contexts, however, the purpose was self-mastery, albeit oriented toward unique goals. In medieval monasticism the emphasis was placed on submission, which admits of another; ascetic practice in

32 Cf. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York, 1988); V. Wimbush and R. Valantasis, eds., Asceticism (Oxford, 1995); H. A. Luckman & L. Kulzer, eds., Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature (Collegeville, MN, 1999); P. Cox Miller, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity, Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion (Philadelphia, 2009).

33 E. Clark, “Foucault, the Fathers, and Sex,” JAAR 56 (1988), 619-641, at 631. She notes that in Classical Greece, a free male incorporated sexual restraint into his regimen of asceticism aimed at self-mastery “ in order to create a life more brilliant than that of his fellow humans, and his elitist ethic is accompanied by a quest for self-knowledge, for ‘truth.’” 152 medieval monasticism could not be deemed what Foucault called a “solo contest.”34 The key difference in the monastic interpretation lies in the role and meaning of the master or teacher. In classical antiquity the self-discipline of the master signaled his freedom from constraining social norms and accorded him an exalted individual status amongst a select number of elites. The self-mastery of the monastic teacher, on the other hand, was the result of his efforts to submit himself with humility to the Rule and cultivate the habits of self-denial and communal living. The monastic master was a man who epitomized the monastic community and its virtues, not individual freedom and exaltedness.

The bodily aesthetic and bearing of the Carolingian monastic master bore marked similarity to ascetic men of the classical and early Christian eras. The ideal monk was ingenio hic prudens, probus actu atque ore facundus.35 The Carolingian monastic teacher was to be attentive and careful in his reading, a skilled grammarian, able to dictate verses and a master of eloquent prose.36 This depiction of the ideal monastic teacher is found in epitaphs, which were written to provide their readers with an exemplar to whom they could compare themselves and whose learning and virtue they should seek to imitate. Yet despite his expertise in grammar and rhetoric, the master did not hold the exalted individual status of his classical counterparts. Instead, the monastic teacher was an example of renunciation of the individual and submission to a communal

34 See M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume II. The Use of Pleasure, trans. R. Hurley (New York, 1985), 68. E. Clark, “Foucault, the Fathers, and Sex,” 633-34, also argues that Foucault overstated the importance of “passivity” and “intactness” in early Christian asceticism and notes that the Desert Fathers “still exhibit that quality of self-mastery that Foucault found characteristic of Athenian male ideals. The model of physical intactness that Foucault deems so important in monastic literature arises relatively late, and is most notably associated with the theme of Mary’s perpetual virginity.”

35 De lit. colendis.

36 See Hrabanus Maurus, Epitaphium Einhardi, MGH Poetae Aevi Carolini, vol. 2, ed. E Dümmler (Berlin, 1884), 237-38 and Hrabanus Maurus, Epitaphium Walachfredi Abbatis, ibid., 239. 153 ideal. In order to emphasize the importance of this shift, Carolingian authors wrote the vitae of a number of saints to reflect the move away from the Early Christian individual pursuit of holiness toward a strengthening of group identification. Along with this shift came a refocusing of monastic ascetic practices away from the individual spiritual battle in favor of a more communal spirituality of humility and obedience, and a focus on learning, as we saw in Paul the Deacon’s reworking of the vita of Saint Benedict.

We can see the shift toward a more communal definition of monastic life in the vita of Saint Wigbert, an early eighth-century Frankish abbot, that Lupus, a one-time student of Hrabanus Maurus at Fulda, wrote in the second quarter of the ninth century.

The young scholar wrote the vita at the request of Abbot Bun at Herzfeld, and the request and acceptance of the task was a proffering and acceptance of friendship between the young scholar and the abbot.37 In this work, Lupus outlined the characteristics of the ideal monastic teacher. The vita that Lupus wrote departs from the traditional narrative template of earlier Frankish vitae. The most salient difference is the subject of the text; earlier vitae tend to memorialize royal and high-ranking ecclesiastical figures, that is, saints who were politically important to the Frankish elite or Merovingian dynasty.38 Lupus does not address the imperial status of Hersfeld, where

Wigbert was first appointed abbot, nor does he give any indication of the saint’s familial

37 The exchange of texts as transactions that defined friendship in the monastic community of the Carolingian Empire will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5, below.

38 P. Fouracre, “Merovingian History and Merovingian Hagiography,” Past and Present 127, 3-38, at 9 notes that Merovingian saints were largely Frankish magnates who held positions of power within the Frankish Church, not members of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy as had been the case through the sixth century. G. Philippart and M. Trigalet, “Latin Hagiography before the Ninth Century: A Synoptic View” in J. R. Davis and M. McCormick, eds., The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT, 2008), 111-130, at 118-9, notes that “Gaul’s hagiography essentially concerns great founder bishops who were pillars of the Frankish order...Gaul’s sacred history is political and ecclesiastical, with a strong ‘national’ resonance.” F. Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich. Kultur und Gesellschaft in Gallien, den Rheinlanden und Bayern am Beispiel der monastischen Entwicklung (4. bis 8. Jahrhundert) (Vienna, 1965), 489-503 describes this hagiographical development as the Selbstheiligung of the Frankish warrior-aristocracy. 154 or royal ties. His lineage is solely monastic; Wigbert is a disciple of Boniface. The vita does not include the performing of a single miracle; those are reserved for after the saint’s death.39 The saintly qualities of Wigbert’s earthly life are imitable, and the monastic reader could draw parallels between the vita and his own experience of monastic life – particularly in regards to Wigbert’s youthful zeal for study and ascesis.40

Lupus opens the vita with a preface intended to highlight his education and demonstrate his aptitude for Latin prose. He pays homage to the literary canon upon which his education had been based, mentioning Sallust and Livy as well as Saint Jerome and Saint Ambrose in an extended apology for his undertaking the task of documenting

Wigbert’s life:

Nec vero cuiquam haec ideo iudicentur infirma quod octigentesimo trigesimo sexo anno Dominicae incarnationis, indictione autem quarta decima praesens opusculum cudens, ante nonaginta annos acta repetere videar, cum profecto, si vel leviter est eruditus, non ignoret Sallustium Crispum Titumque Livium non pauca quae illorum aetatem longe praecesserant partim auditu, partim lectione comperta narrasse, et, ut ad nostros veniam, Hieronymum Pauli sui Vitam, quae certe remotissima fuerat, litteris illustrasse,

39 Even here, the miracles were not deemed plentiful enough and a tenth-century addition of the Miracula Sancti Wigberti was written to strengthen the property claims of the abbey by asserting the power and protection of the saint. See K. Leyser, Medieval Germany and its Neighbors, 900- 1250 (London, 1982), 36-37.

40 The prefatory note to both this life and Lupus’ Vita Sancti Maximini indicate that he was uncomfortable with the abundance of miracles recounted in saints’ vitae. His appeal to the histories written by Sallust and Livy appears in the context of his defending the accuracy of a work that recalls events from the distant past, to which neither he nor anyone he might consult could have been an eyewitness. His mention of Jerome’s Vita Pauli may be calculated to point out that this hallowed text is chock full of miracles and its veracity is beyond questioning, and therefore the text at hand out not to be blamed for the few it contains. In his life of St Maximinus, discussed in greater detail below, Lupus has to grapple with the fact that a life has already been written and does contain more traditional miracles. Lupus writes that he intends to provide a more accurate life and to sort out the details that have been found to be apocryphal (ut Vitam beati Maximini meo stylo elucubrarem, et res quae ad nos usque qualibuscunque litteris decurrerunt, accuratiori sermone convenienti restituerem dignitati...Verum in hoc opere illud me admodum coarctat quod multis quae dum adhuc viveret egit, ut palam est, silentio suppressis, vix parva gestorum illius monimenta exstant, et in his ipsis quaedam fabulosis inveniuntur similia. VSM, preface). 155

et antistitem Ambrosium virginis Agnes passionem, cui profecto contemporalis non fuerat, editam reliquisse.41

Thus, indeed, may no one judge this work to be inaccurate because I am forging this little work in the 836th year of our Lord, in the 14th indiction, and I seem to be rehashing events from ninety years ago, since, certainly, if a person is even slightly educated, they are not unaware that Sallust and Livy narrated not a few things which had long preceded their own time, some of which they came to know through reading and some through hearing them told. And let us come to our own writers: Jerome has elucidated in writing his Vita Pauli, which was certainly very long ago, and the bishop Ambrose left us the published passio of the Virgin Agnes, who was manifestly not his contemporary.

As he begins the narrative of the vita proper, Lupus also reveals his knowledge of Bede’s

Historia when he provides the history of how Saxons came to inhabit the British Isles.42

By starting the vita in the fifth century, Lupus explicitly connects Wigbert and Frankish monasticism to the venerable Anglo-Saxon monastic tradition.

Lupus describes how Saint Boniface appointed Wigbert as abbot of Herzfeld, a new foundation in northern Germany. There, Wigbert, who himself sanctarum

Scripturarum regebatur auctoritate, managed to convert the brothers ab laxam ac fluidam conversationem ad normam suae vitae.43 Boniface soon noticed that Wigbert’s example was a powerful teaching tool; the monks at Herzfeld had learned the monastic life aemulando magistrum. Hoping to promote adherence to the regular life elsewhere,

Boniface moved Wigbert to Ohrdruf in Thuringia. Lupus frames Wigbert’s acceptance of the abbacy of Ohrdruf as humble submission to Boniface; the new abbot’s own

41 VSW, pref.

42 VSW, ch. 1.

43 Lupus of Ferrières, Vita sancti Wigberti, PL 119, col 685A. 156 submission to the will of his master provided an example for his new pupils.44 Here, as at Herzfeld, the example of Wigbert’s life instructed and converted the monks:

Atque ibi successu simili desudans, quae perperam gerebantur correxit; ac ipse absque diverticulo carpens arctam viam, quae infatigabiles quosque ducit ad vitam, catervam post se fratrum prospere traxit.45

And there too, having encountered a similar situation and working tirelessly, he corrected those habits which were wrongly being practiced; and he himself, without wavering, seized the narrow way, which, in turn, brought all the unfaltering to that way of life, and, fortunately, drew the throng of brothers after them.

Lupus points out again that it was Wigbert’s unflagging devotion to the monastic life that drew the brothers at Ohrdruf to follow his example. After a number of years, Wigbert received permission to return to Herzfeld for his retirement.46 Wigbert, however, was so overjoyed to return to his old home that he renewed his efforts at monastic perfection, an effort that Lupus characterizes as behaving as a young monk rather than as one who has the merit of age and so many surpassing labors to his name.47 His austerities were aimed at a two-fold goal: that he might abstain from frivolous words (verbis inanibus

44 Lupus writes that Wigbert monitu paterno ad alterum compulit migrare monasterium (ch. 6). When Wigbert wishes to return to Herzfeld, Lupus is even more at pains to emphasize the monk’s humility: Itaque non frustra illic tritis aliquot annis, cum praeter id quod senio gravabatur, anticipiti morbo subinde laboraret, nihil citra sancti Bonifacii gerere volens auctoritatem, enixissimis ab eo precibus, intima tamen humilitate conditis, obtinuit ut ad prius revertens coenobium (ch. 7). And although Boniface and Wigbert were near contemporaries, and Wigbert may have in fact been slightly older, Lupus’ vita allows the reader to assume that Boniface is the elder monk and Wigbert the younger. The text introduces Wigbert at birth, noting that he had noble origins and then writes that from his early youth, he stood out on account of his surpassing virtue (ch. 2). Boniface, on the other hand is introduced as a clarissimus vir (ch. 3). On Wigbert’s chronology, see BHL 8879.

45 Ibid., col 685B.

46 Lupus indicates that he was sickly: corpus illius morbo urgeretur (ch.7).

47 The notion of a young monk being both better suited to the labors of study and efforts and monastic ascesis is a common Carolingian monastic theme. In inscriptions for the walls on monastic living spaces, young monks are encouraged to study in earnest while they are young and able. See, for example, Carmen XCIII in Appendix 2. 157 abstineret) and that he should never leave off the study of Sacred Scripture (sacrae legis meditationem nunquam mente deponeret). Both of these attributes were hallmarks of the ideal Carolingian monk. Alcuin, in a lengthy poem that opens, Haec praecepta legat devotus ut impleat actu, enumerates a number of guidelines for monastic life, including,

Contra verbosos noli contendere verbis and Magna quidem virtus est nam moderatio linguae.48 Reserved speech and a studious demeanor signaled that Wigbert was sapiens, a learned man from whom others should learn.49

The account of abbot’s life operated as a sort of asymmetrical mirror for ninth- century monks, in which they saw where they ought to be in the discipline of their own lives. In this way, the vita operated as a mimetic text both for abbots, who could compare themselves to and imitate Wigbert, and monastic students, who could emulate the example of the reformed monastic students in the story, as well as to Wigbert’s own example of humility, obedience to a superior, and zeal for monastic practice. The

Carolingian monk lived in a cloister literally surrounded by exhortations to sing more loudly during prayer, to devote greater time and effort to study while his mind was still sharp and flexible, and to practice bodily denial while still in good health. Inscriptions bearing these admonitions, written by several different monastic authors and intended for the walls of Carolingian monasteries, survive for us.50 As I argued in Chapter One, these inscriptions are important evidence that textual study had become a hallmark of monastic life in the Carolingian period.

48 MGH, Poet. I, 275-281, verses 99, 113. See also verse 44.

49 Ibid., verse 98: Disce, sed a doctis...

50 In addition to the inscriptions found on walls of various monastic spaces and rooms, such as those written by Alcuin discussed in Chapter 1, above, inscriptions would have been throughout the liturgical spaces of the monastery, as dedications to altars, invocations to patron saints, and inscriptions on monastic tombs. Dümmler included many such inscriptions in his collection, MGH, Poet., voll. 1-4. 158

Monasteries in the West through the fifth and sixth centuries emphasized ascetic practice as the goal of monastic training, and contemplation as the fruit of that goal.

Study was considered insofar as it was a form of asceticism. Monastic practice centered on “fasting, vigils, and psalmody,” and the culture P. Riché characterizes as “ascetical exercises and spiritual meditation on the Bible rather than learned exegesis and theology.”51 Riché similarly characterizes Merovingian ecclesiastical culture as dominated by biblical memorization rather than exegetical learning and notes that

Merovingian treatises display the literary talent of men brought up with an aristocratic education, but in the face of heresy, they are not much more than an aggregation of

Scriptural quotations. The Merovingians, Riché writes, “believed more in the power of miracles than in the success of an extended proof.”52 The major difference between the hagiography of the Carolingian period and that of the Merovingians is the amplified mimetic aspect of the Carolingian texts. Where earlier hagiographies emphasized the connection between the subject’s nobility and holiness, which is evidenced through the saint’s ability to perform miracles, Carolingian hagiographies aimed to depict saints whose lives were imitable for monastic students.53

51 P. Riché, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West, Sixth through Eighth Centuries (Columbia, SC, 1976), 100-22.

52 Ibid., 266-74. The valuation of miracles and the charismatic power of a saint is evident in the late fifth-century life of Germanus of Auxerre, an important Gallo-Roman aristocrat and imperial administrator. After he had been appointed bishop of Auxerre, Germanus was asked to go to Britain to fight the Pelagian heresy. The trip is marked by a series of miracles and Germanus’ ability to effect such wonders overwhelmed the masses and “the Catholic faith implanted in them was strengthened in all of them.” T.F.X. Noble and T. Head, eds., Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (University Park, PA, 1995), 94-96.

53 On the role of miracles in Gallic hagiography, see R. Van Dam, Saints and Their Miracles in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton, NJ, 1993), esp. 82-115; and I. Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca, NY, 2000), 108, who notes that “it is important to realize that sties of his kind are not primarily mimetic,” but rather intended to convey to the audience a notion of religious and political authority that stemmed from the manifest holiness of the saint who is able to effect miracles. 159

Although Wigbert’s vita is an example of the life of a Frankish saint from the recent past, Carolingian authors often chose to rewrite the vitae of Early Christian saints, as Paul the Deacon did with St Benedict of Nursia. Authoring vitae of early Christian saints served the dual purposes of underpinning the Carolingian imperial claims by invoking the Early Christian roots in the Frankish kingdoms and providing literary exempla for the monastic community. The other vita written by Lupus that survives for us is that of Maximinus, a mid-fourth century bishop of Trier whose circle of friends included Athanasius of Alexandria and the great champion of Christian orthodoxy in the western Empire, Hosius of Cordoba, and he was the theological adviser to both

Constantius II and Constans on matters of orthodoxy. Lupus also tells us that

Maximinus received an excellent education, both secular and Christian (qui nobiliter educati, sacris pariter litteris instruebantur), and most of time that Maximinus is alive in the text he is battling heresy by means of his erudition.54

Maximinus’ theological pedigree and his connection to the imperial household, in addition to his ties to now-Frankish lands were ideal for providing Lupus the opportunity to write a memorial to the saint that promoted Carolingian monastic culture. Furthermore, the established text of the vita was written in an earlier Gallic hagiographic tradition that focused heavily on miracle stories and provided few details of

Maximinus’ theological career. Monastic distaste for this sort of vita may have been the reason that Abbot Waldo asked Lupus to revise the text.55 In his revision, Lupus is at pains to add editorial comments for his reader that point up monastic virtues. Just as he had done in the vita of Wigbert, written several years earlier, Lupus is sure to explicitly

54 PL 119, 668A.

55 Ep. 13: Huius tantae rei subtilis consideratio me tibi, Waldo charissime, suasit morigerari, et quod iam inde ab initio nostrae cognitionis magnopere flagitasti ne tibi negarem effecit, scilicet ut Vitam beati Maximini meo stylo elucubrarem, et res quae ad nos usque qualibuscunque litteris decurrerunt, accuratiori sermone convenienti restituerem dignitati. 160 note where Maximinus’ life is exemplary and contains a mimetic aspect for students, rather than highlighting his miracles as proof of his holiness.

Where the anonymous eighth-century vita focuses heavily on the miraculous prediction that Maximinus would succeed to the see of Trier, Lupus’ version focuses on the virtues of the young cleric, whom Lupus notes was on his way to becoming a preeminent defender of Christian orthodoxy.56 Where the voice of an angel suffices as the only proof of Maximinus’ worthiness and virtue in the earlier text, Lupus elaborates on the saint’s character.57 Upon his arrival in Trier he submitted himself (se informandum submisit) to the guidance (magisterio) of Bishop Agritius of Trier, a man preeminent for his spirituality.58 Following the miraculous prediction of Maximinus’ elevation to the See of Trier, the anonymous vita inserts a brief, boilerplate humility trope: se confitebatur fore tali indignum honore.59 Lupus elaborates at some length on this, using the event to teach his audience about virtue:

B. Maximinus huic oneri modis omnibus se imparem fatebatur. Ita quem iam secretorum inspector probaverat, fragilitatis propriae rigidus aestimator de se vilia sentiebat. Hoc utinam homines nunc et intueri vellent et imitari! Profecto nunquam ecclesiasticos honores, qui sanctis et eruditis tantummodo competunt, correptelis vitiorum obnoxii, oraculorumque coelestium nescii, pecunia mercatum irent, humerisque suis velut gravem seque oppressuram sarcinam nolentes ac reclamantes nequaquam prorsus imponerent.60

56 PL 119, 668A.

57 The earlier, anonymous life is edited in AASS May VII, 21-24, and the account of Maximinus’ early clerical training is as follows: Sanctus...Maximinus, et Maxentius frater eius, ac Jovinus, divinis bene eruditi sunt legibus; Maxentius in Pictavensi electus est urbe a Pontificatus ordine. Tunc Maximinus perrexit Treviros in Galliam, quia audiverat B. Agricii Episcopi; ut ibi clericatus acciperat onus, in ipso iam supradicto loco, quod et factam est. Postea S. Quiriacus nocturna perrexit vigilia ad S Eucharium, vigilias custodiens noctis: ibique Angelus veniens Domini ad eum, denuntiavit ei dicens: Vade et dic Maximino; ipse erit Pontifex post obitum B. Agricii.

58 PL 119, 668-69.

59 AASS May VII, 21.

60 PL 119, 669-70. 161

Maximinus confessed himself unequal in every way to this burden. And though the seer of secrets already had pronounced him good, he, the harsh appraiser considered himself worthless on account of his own weakness. If only men nowadays wished to consider and imitate this! Indeed it is certainly not only just those who are suited to ecclesiastical honors as regards their holiness and their learning who are at the mercy of corrupting vices and unaware of heavenly prophecies, [who engage in usury], and they refuse the heavy burden as a weight upon their shoulders and then, not protesting in the least, they might pick it up again.

Here, the presentation that Lupus offers of Maximinus is intended to engage the monastic student in a mimetic exercise with the master located within the text. Lupus’ editorial comments offer both an exhortation to monastic virtue and a critique of how the Carolingian court handed out ecclesiastical offices and abbacies in return for political favors, an issue close to Lupus’ own heart.

Upon his return to Ferrières, Lupus found himself working as secretary to the abbot Odo and at great pains to maintain good relations between the Carolingian royal household, which was itself splintering into factions, and the monastery.61 Shortly after he wrote the vita of Saint Maximinus, Lupus was appointed successor to Abbot Odo.

Louis the Pious had died, and the Carolingian lands had been divided in a contentious settlement amongst his sons. Odo had been unsure how the division would ultimately play out and had hedged his bets, calling into question his loyalty to Charles the Bald, now in control of Ferrières’ territory. His problems with regard to the assignment of ecclesiastical offices and properties as benefices for loyal service were just beginning.

Another result of the division of the Carolingian kingdom was that Charles’ brother

61 Lupus of Ferrières is known to us largely through his collection of letters, written between 830 and his death about thirty years later. Lupus is well-known as a Carolingian literary figure, and his letters provide valuable information about Carolingian learning and the Carolingian Renaissance. The letters also detail Lupus’ travels to royal assemblies and synods, as well as trips he took as an emissary of Charles the Bald. What follows as an introduction to Lupus’ career and his views on monastic life come from his letter collection, the modern edition of which is Lupus of Ferrières, Correspondance, ed. and trans. L. Lévillain, 2 vol. (Paris, 1927). 162

Lothar had granted the use and income from the land of daughter house to a local aristocrat in return for military service. Lupus wrote a number of letters to both Charles the Bald and Lothar enumerating in great detail the hardships incurred at Ferrières as a result of the transfer of the property and imploring its restoration to the abbey.

In the fractious and unsettled political climate at the beginning of Lupus’ career, he found solace in monastic life. His writings, like Walafrid’s are indicative of the third generation of monastic scholars, who longed for a return to the monastic emphasis on study and learning, detachment from self and from the world, and submission of the individual will to the virtues of communal life that they had found so liberating as students. A number of letters that Lupus authored from about 837 on bear witness to the role of study, education, and teaching in the monastic tradition and the importance of these endeavors to Lupus as a monk and an abbot. He also continued to make every effort to fulfill his role as a teacher, both by devoting whatever time he could to study and by instructing or overseeing the instruction of young monks.

Lupus’ concern about how little studying he is able to accomplish is linked closely to his understanding of the role of a teacher in the monastery:

Si tanta facilitate discuti possent a quoquam quanta moventur quaestiones, olim ad consummatam studiosi quique sapientiam evasissent. Nunc, litterarum studiis paene obsoletis, quotus quisque inveniri possit qui de magistrorum imperitia, librorum penuria, otii denique inopia merito non quaeratur? Quo minus indignari mihi debes si perexiguum otii, quod mihi vix optingit, indagandis quae nesciam, quam ventilandis quae jam consecutus sum, judicem expendendum.

If questions could be answered by anyone as easily as they are raised, all scholars would have reached the summit of wisdom long ago. But now literary studies are almost completely neglected, how few can be found who do not justifiably complain of the ignorance of teachers, the scarcity of books, and the lack of time for study. You must not be offended with me, then, if instead of explaining 163

those subjects which I have already mastered I deem it proper to devote every minute of time I have to study of things which I do not understand.62

In this letter Lupus laments the neglect of monastic life and discipline as much as he does the lack of attention and esteem paid to study. In an earlier letter to the same monk

Altuin, Lupus writes of the time he has spent devoted to study and reading since returning to Ferrières after a prolonged absence, presumably while at the imperial court.

In this letter, he notes that although conditions at the monastery demanded his attention immediately upon his return, that within a few months, regular life would be restored and his friend could pay him a visit to discuss his studies without concern.63 Lupus does not seem to separate the regularity of his own life and the cultivation of his own studies from the rhythms of life of his monastery as a whole. If his schedule demanded too much travel and a lack of leisure for study, he perceived the problem as a global one, the suffering of the monastic community as a whole on account of the neglect of monastic discipline.

The lack of time devoted to study was problematic both for Lupus’ cultivation of his own monastic virtue and also for his students, who learned from the good example of their master:

Nec, ut opinor, erro, si quibus divino favore viam intelligentiae vel aperui vel planiorem feci, quam praecesserim sequendi necessitatem indicam; hoc est, lectione magistra vel utens, vel usus, si auditoribus meis aut praesentibus id ipsum sermone, aut absentibus obstinato imponam silentio.

Nor do I believe that I am making a mistake if I direct those whose pathway to knowledge I have with God’s favor revealed or made smoother to take the path over which I have traveled, if, that is to say, by using or having used the written text as my

62 Ep. 9.

63 Ep. 8. 164

guide, I shall impose the same practice upon my pupils, persuading those present by word of mouth and those absent by a stubborn silence.64

Lupus’ role as teacher begins with his own study and learning because of the importance of examples and models in Carolingian education. Lupus himself was a model for his students, his scholarship (e.g. the vitae he wrote) was an exemplum, and likewise, the subject of the literary work was an exemplum. The student learned to read the text and draw from it the monastic virtues it aimed to promote. Then the student moved from reading the text in this rather straightforward manner to the study of authorial intent, and then on to the study of the author. In this way, the progression of textual study was itself a progression through the purposes of the monastic mimetic educational tradition.

Study of the author and his intent was integral to monastic scholarship and the development of the monastic sense of community because, as Lupus tells us in his vita of

Saint Maximinus, monks saw that texts were not fixed without a set textual and interpretive community.65 This interpretive community was formed via the textual and cultural education of young monks. The author of the monastic text, therefore, assumed and even relied upon the audience’s acceptance of the monastic mentalité as the medium through which the text could convey meaning through symbol and idiom. In this way, monastic writing and reading required cooperation between author and audience; it

64 Ep. 9.

65 Lupus closed the vita with a short conclusion that addresses, not just Waldo, but legere volentes. Like the preface, this concluding bit reveals Lupus’ self consciousness and consideration of his role as an author: His, ut arbritror, legere volentes satis superque instruximus quam efficax in sacratissimo viro pellendi spiritus perditos sit gratia et emineat semper potentia. Caeterum si velimus et hac et multiplici aliarum virtutum specie quoties floruerit usque ad hunc annum, quo scribimus, hoc est, ab incarnatione Domini octingentesimum tricesimum nonum, styli officio designare, ne modum libri tenebimus, et erudito lectori minus erimus grati, dum similia frequenter narrabimus. As I see it, for those who wish to read [this], we have given enough and more than enough instruction as to how efficacious the grace of the most holy man is for the expulsion of evil spirits and concerning how his power always shines forth. If I so desired to designate with the help of my pen how often by this and multiple other manifestations of virtues he excelled all the way up to this year, in which I write, that is AD 838, I would not contain (myself within) the limit of a book, and I would be less pleasing to my learned reader by too frequently narrating similar things. 165 required submission to communal or shared norms of communication. The author had to write according to a set of grammatical and rhetorical rules, that is using a common language or ‘idiom’66 that could convey to his readers the ethical or ideological content of his text. The reader, in turn, was an interpreter of that text whose cooperation with the author was the interpretive key to the text. Lupus’ use of the common topos of miracle- working in Maximinus’ vita illustrates the relationship between author and audience, master and student.

In the preface addressed to Waldo, Lupus discusses the question of the form and genre he will employ in writing Maximinus’ vita. He also tackles the issue of topoi and the traditional form of the saints’ vita. He says that scarcely any texts of Maximinus’ deeds survive, et in his ipsis quaedam fabulosis invenientur similia.67 Of course, such a claim allows Lupus interesting license with the miracles he will include in his vita and allows him to shape, within the vita tradition, his saint. He does not eliminate the fabulosa, by any means. In fact, the text follows a traditional format for early medieval

66 This notion of cooperation between author and audience is drawn from several sources. J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), 1-27, uses the term ‘idioms’ to describe the shared language whose interpretation is contested by participants in a political argument. Of course, the contested space that Pocock studies is precisely the space where cooperation is required in the monastic interpretive community. But in order to create the space, a shared code of communication is necessary. D. Hamilton, Virgil and the Tempest: The Politics of Imitation (Columbus, OH, 1990) and ibid., Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England (Lexington, KY, 1992) are excellent example of the application of Pocock’s methodology to he study of authorial intention and reception in a literary work. A half century ago, W. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago, 1961), argued that an author of a literary work employs what he termed a “rhetoric” in order to convey his authorial intent to his audience. In order to do so in a novel, Booth maintains, the author must imagine himself as his own “imagined reader,” and communicate effectively with this reader through the “implied author” or narrator. A successful communication of ideas and values from (actual) author to (actual) reader requires (1) the author to properly identify understand his audience, and (2) the reader to properly understand the rhetoric of the implied author and play the role of the actual author’s imagined ideal reader. This relationship, Booth maintains, is difficult to properly create because of the actual author’s effort to hide himself in favor of the implied author and because of the instability of the actual audience. Fortunately, the literary works examined in the present study present a more straightforward author-reader relationship. The author must use a “rhetoric” accessible to his reader, and the reader must assume the role of the work’s ideal reader as imagined by the author, both of which are encouraged by the monastic context in which both the author and the audience operate.

67 PL 119, col. 667B. 166 vitae; Lupus writes Maximinus’ vita but focuses heavily on the death, translatio and post mortem miracles of the saint. Moreover, the central miracle of Maximinus’ life is one in which he and a bishop, Martin, are travelling together with a donkey. A bear eats their donkey and Maximinus commands the bear to carry their luggage since he has eaten their beast of burden. The bear obliges and the two men continue their journey.68

This odd animal miracle seems out of place given Lupus’ effort to emphasize

Maximinus’ learnedness and virtue as hallmarks of his claim to sanctity. After all, most of time that Maximinus is alive in the text he is battling heresy by means of his erudition.

One reason for including this story in the vita is that an animal miracle also puts

Maximinus in some good ancient company: Antony, Paul the Hermit, Benedict, and

Cuthbert to name a few.69 Lupus also knows he is working from an earlier text of

Maximinus’ life. The earlier version contains formulae and narrative themes that, although by no means exclusively reserved for oral tradition, are critical hallmarks of it.

Such structures play an important role in fixing an oral ‘text,’ and Lupus seems to take care to argue for the correctness – authority – of his own text in both the preface and concluding remarks of Maximinus’ vita. Lupus reworks the story of the bear so that his readership, Waldo and the monks at Trier in particular, will note the differences in the two accounts and use these keys to understand the moral lesson that he is trying to convey.

Just as with Paul the Deacon’s vita of St Benedict, Lupus’ audience would have been familiar with the story of Maximinus’ life as it had been previously recorded.70 In the eighth-century version, Maximinus and Martin arrive at a camp (castellum) after a

68 PL 119, coll. 673-74.

69 On the symbolism of animal miracles, see P. Boglioni, “Il santo e gli animali nell’alto medioevo,” L’uomo di fronte al mondo animale nell’alto medioevo, Settimane di studio, 31 (1985).

70 The earlier version of the miracle is found in the anonymous vita at AASS, May VII, 21. 167 day’s journey and Martin goes to get supplies leaving Maximinus to look after the ass and the baggage (ibique Sanctum reliquit Maximinum, ut custodiret eorum sarcinulas, et asellum simul cum sportellis).71 But Maximinus, overcome by the exhaustion of journeying falls asleep on the job. Martin returns to find Maximinus asleep and the ass missing. When Martin frantically wakes and questions him, Maximinus realizes that a bear has eaten their animal and commands the bear, “Veni, sequere me” adding that the bear will fulfill the role of the ass which he had eaten.72 In Lupus’ text, the two holy men are walking along discussing divine things (divinis rebus intenti) so much that they did not feel the effort or exhaustion of the journey (ut laborem itineris non sentiebat), when the bear approaches and attacks the ass.73 This departure from the original account is striking; the example that Lupus’ Maximinus provides fits the Carolingian ideal – a monk indefatigable in his spiritual efforts. Also, the saint does not suffer the indignity, and more importantly, does not embody the bad example, of falling asleep on the job.

Finally, Lupus does not need to be so heavy-handed in the miraculous redemption of

Maximinus’ soporific lapse, and can dispose of the exaggerated “Come, follow me” parallel to Jesus. The result is that Maximinus is a more exemplary monastic model whose focus on spiritual things and ability to overcome bodily fatigue are imitable, as opposed to the eighth-century version, whose actions are not a good model and whose miracle cannot be imitated.

Lupus uses the well-known miracle of the bear as a place to “make a move” in the text.74 Although his text intends to downplay the significance of miracle-working as an indicator of holiness, he uses the idiom of miracle working to signal a change in the

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid.

73 PL 119, col 673B.

74 The model employed in this explanation is J.G.A. Pocock’s. See note 66 above. 168 values associated with sanctity. His audience would have understood the idiom and the story’s prior context and was therefore equipped to follow the point he was making. But in order for the audience to make the move with him, that is to comprehend the intention of Lupus’ move, they had to not only understand the idiom and notice the move, but be familiar with the monastic context in which Lupus intended the text to operate. Lupus’ text works in dialogue with the earlier vita of St Maximinus, and therefore requires education in a monastic context, and perhaps the practice of living a monastic life, in order for the reader of the text to read and understand the episode as modeling Carolingian monastic values.

Saint Maximinus, in Lupus’ work, is a scholar and an ascetic. His ascesis is not extreme or unparalleled; instead, it is a result of his education and grows out of his focus on spiritual matters over bodily concerns. Lupus’ text emphasizes that Maximinus submitted himself to the bishop of Trier, displaying humility and obedience befitting a monk. The picture of the ideal monk that emerges from Lupus’ writings is that of a learned man who seeks to separate himself from the secular and political world. He does not do this, however, through extreme solitude, but instead by submitting himself to the rules and rhythms of communal life within a monastery. The political climate in which the third generation of Carolingian monks lived made this ideal appealing and nearly impossible to achieve. Monastic authors took to criticizing the actions of the Carolingian rulers and the aristocracy, as well as expressing a desire to be done with any involvement in the various feuds amongst Louis the Pious and his sons. Though their writings express a desire for separation from political life, the reality of Carolingian politics, and the value of monastic lands and wealth as gifts offered in return for pledges of loyalty meant that monks had to engage in royal assemblies, military campaigns and various other political rituals in order to ensure the stability of their monasteries. As a way of reconciling the cloistered ideal with the need for political involvement, Lupus and his 169 fellow monks professed a longing for a quiet retirement in which they would find the leisure to focus on their studies. 5 Conclusion

By the time the third generation of scholars, men such as Walafrid and Lupus, became the leading monastic scholars of the Carolingian world, the focus on cooperation with and admiration for the Carolingian kings had been replaced by an emphasis on further withdrawal from worldly affairs and a greater focus on life within the monastic community. At the heart of this greater focus on interior life was a shift in the Carolingian monastic purpose. Many of the preeminent monasteries in the Carolingian kingdom had been founded essentially as missions in the seventh century. They were placed in areas still pagan or only recently, and nominally,

Christian. These monasteries were, in effect, missions not just for Christianity but also for civilization.1 This required the monastery to be a place where the retreat of the monks touched the outside world, but remained untouched by it. The monastic ideal that came to be fully developed in the hagiography of Lupus of Ferrières has its roots in the inscriptions of Alcuin, who employed texts to define the relationship between the physical, the bearing and habits of the monastic body, and the moral, the measure of his virtue and his closeness to God. The leading monastic thinkers of the later Carolingian era did not have to reinvent monasticism to

1 The Franks and the Carolingians equated Christianity with civilization in a way that paralleled the notion that Romanization meant civilization; see R. Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950-1350 (London, 1993) and P. R. L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA, 2003).

170 171 achieve this shift in focus; they could find their inspiration in the work of their own teachers, men such as Alcuin, Paul the Deacon, and Hrabanus Maurus.

Although monks like Lupus could not fully achieve the monastic ideal they describe in their writings, their core monastic values became the foundations of the monastic reforms that took hold beginning in the eleventh century. The eleventh century saw the rise of a variety of eremitical movements across Europe that appeared in response to a distaste for monastic involvement in secular affairs and the corruption that reformers perceived that involvement brought into the monastery. These eremitical movements, however, tended to take shape as smaller, more withdrawn communities, gathered around a charismatic teacher. Not only did these new monastic communities embrace the values that their Carolingian forebears had emphasized in their literary works, but often, the eremitical communities relied on Benedictine monasteries to ensure their unmolested solitude.2 As these eremitical movements grew, and particularly after the death of the charismatic teacher, a number of them embraced stricter interpretations of the Benedictine Rule that emphasized as hallmarks of a true monastic life the same values that the Carolingian monks had stressed defined them and marked them off from the rest of society.3

The Carolingian authors and texts examined in this study defined their monastic culture by reappropriating imagery from Roman imperial life, an endeavor that fit well with the symbolism and the architectural program that Charlemagne was employing to represent royal authority. Monastic authors employed the metaphors and idioms of classical love poetry, elegies and pastorals above all, but their writings disconnected desire from immorality and repeatedly emphasize the quest for wisdom and unity with God as the primary objects of monastic desire, thus moving monastic engagement with desire from an ascetic approach aimed at suppression

2 See U. Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia, 1988), 1-22, esp. 19-22.

3 H. Leyser, Hermits and the New Monasticism: A Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe 1000-1150 (New York, 1984). 172 to a positive yearning for the fruits of their monastic labors. Here again the use of idioms like retirement from worldly affairs and the leisure for study aimed at ascending to a more perfect understanding of and union with God characterizes the new Carolingian monastic ethics of desire.

The writings of first generation of Carolingian monastic reformers, Alcuin and Paul the

Deacon among them, express a tension between their role developing and implementing court policies and advocacy for monasticism in its own right. This tension spurred the development of a rich monastic literary tradition that ensured the transmission of what M. Alberi calls a

“monastically inspired religious and cultural program” aimed at achieving spiritual progress toward a fuller union with the divine.4 Alcuin and Paul the Deacon both note that the Rule of

Saint Benedict provides foundational instruction concerning self-abnegation, submission of the will, obedience to a (learned) master, and communal life. Even during the relative political stability of Charlemagne’s reign, Alcuin was disturbed by the duties that life at court imposed upon him and the detriments those duties posed to monastic study and contemplation. In a letter home to a friend from York, he laments drowning in a whirlpool of worldly riches.

Similarly in a letter to Angilbert, a fellow courtier and monastic, he employs a nautical image to illustrate his feeling battered by the requirements of royal service and says that he is trying to arrive at a port of stability.5

4 M. Alberi, “‘The Better Paths of Wisdom’: Alcuin’s Monastic ‘True Philosophy’ and the Worldly Court” Speculum 76 (2001), 896-910, at 898.

5 To Eada at York, see Alcuin, Epistolae, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Epistolae, vol. 4, Ep. 53: Habeto nos, obsecro, socios beatitudinis tuae, sicut te cupimus socium habere prosperitatis nostrae. Et orationibus devotionis vestrae deduc nos in eumdem paupertatis gradum, in quo, perficiente Deo, salubriter consistis. Tu tenes in manibus quod nos olim tenere cogitavimus. Sed fluctus saeculi nostram naviculam procellosis ventis in voraginem divitiarum rapuerunt. Sed te precor ut me pietatis precibus in portum quietis revocare studeas. Cupio, sed non facio. To Angilbert, Ep. 97: Dulcissimo filio vir fluctivagus salutem. Te abeunte tentavi saepius ad portum stabilitatis venire; sed rector rerum et dispensator animarum necdum concessit posse quod olim fecit velle. Adhuc ex radice cordis nascentes cogitationum ramusculos ventus tentationum flagellat, ut consolationis flores et refectionis fructus nutriri nequiverint. Tota nocte laborantes nihil cepimus, quia necdum in littore Jesus stetit, praecipiens in dexteram navigii rete mitti. 173

As political stability disintegrated under Louis the Pious in the latter half of the 820s,

Carolingian monks like Hrabanus Maurus tried to shore up Carolingian royal power and prestige by offering a unified political and religious identity for the king and the kingdom.

Hrabanus’ collection of poems in the Liber de laudibus Sanctae Crucis was aimed at linking

Louis with Roman and Byzantine imperial traditions, but the literary work itself demonstrates the potency of appropriating and redefining symbols and idioms from the classical literary tradition for use in a monastic context. Walafrid’s De Imagine Tetrici is an example of how the later generation of Carolingian monastic writers redefined symbols and idioms in their works to critique the emperor and the court and to increase the prestige of the Carolingian monastic community. Walafrid’s poem employs the symbolism provided by the architecture to create competition with the lay aristocracy of the Empire. The military and political value of provincial noble families to the Carolingian rulers afforded them tremendous political capital, often at the expense of monastic and ecclesiastical entities. Authors such as Walafrid Strabo turned to the monastic appropriation of classical symbols of elite social status to secure their position relative to the lay aristocracy vis à vis the Carolingian ruler and ensure that royal policies would not be detrimental to monastic communities.

The changes that Carolingian policies brought to the monasteries of the Frankish kingdoms in the late eighth and early ninth centuries were shaped by the physical spaces of the monasteries at which the changes were aimed. Not all the old Merovingian monasteries were razed, as St Riquier, and new Carolingian ones built in their place. Nor were all the pre-Caroline monasteries renovated, with new libraries, schoolrooms, and scriptoria added on. The spaces in these monasteries changed shape in the minds of their inhabitants as the monastic way of life changed. The poems inscribed on the walls of the old, pre-Caroline monasteries and on the renovated early Carolingian monasteries effectively changed the way monks conceived of the spaces in which they lived. Inscriptions such as those at Tours marked off areas according to the activity that occurred there. Eventually the monks saw these spaces as discreet locations (hic) 174 designated for specific purposes. The schola, once a word that designated the entire community of monastic learners, but then appeared in the Admonitio generalis as a place for teaching novices, is not just a single, purpose-built facility in the St-Gall Plan, but two single purpose spaces: one for monks and one for lay pupils.

The division of public and private, monastic and secular, spaces became more concrete after 820. M. de Jong points out that in the late eighth century, “court and cloister served as interconnected locations of training, with trainees going from one place to the other without crossing any real boundaries.”6 But she notes that by the third generation of scholars produced in these “interlocking worlds,” the self-sufficiency and desire for freedom among the monastic scholars led to the more strict emphasis on the cloister and separation from the outside world.

The space of the cloister and the claustral complex was the symbol of their distance from the secular world, and, as a result, became a more architecturally secluded place with the monastery.

The textual form of the inscription is the essence of the reputation that Carolingian monastic literature has received in modern scholarship. Embedded in rock, utilizing monochrome verbs, and addressing the reader of monastery inscriptions as a traveller or wanderer, the text greets the reader with the sharp contrast between its immortality and immutability and the ephemeral nature of the reader’s own existence.7 In this sense, the life of the monastic schola was not limited to the schoolroom, but was fundamental and evident everywhere in the monastery. But each generation of monastic thinkers returned to the themes of monastic life taught to them by their masters, and acted upon them in the context of their

6 M. de Jong, “From scholastici to scioli,” 52-53.

7 The greeting of the reader as traveller or wanderer is a common theme on gravestones in antiquity, and would have further driven home the theme of mortality for the reader of the inscription. On viator refer to the bibliography listed in the commentary of L.Wallach, “The Epitaph of Alcuin: A Model of Carolingian Epigraphy, Speculum 30 (1955), 367-73. 175 own time, moving them and shifting their meaning so that they could be passed on as a viable way of life to the next generation.

By the time the third generation of scholars, men such as Walafrid and Lupus, became the leading monastic scholars of the Carolingian world, the focus on cooperation with and admiration for the Carolingian kings had been replaced by an emphasis on further withdrawal from worldly affairs and a greater focus on life within the monastic community. At the heart of this greater focus on interior life was a shift in the Carolingian monastic purpose. Many of the preeminent monasteries in the Carolingian kingdom had been founded essentially as missions in the seventh century. But as this dissertation has demonstrated, Carolingian monks promoted their own internal educational and cultural agenda, and over the three generations of scholars examined here, the royal agenda and the monastic were in tension with each other. The more that monastic values clashed with royal imperative, the more Carolingian monks embraced the imagery of withdrawal from the world, using both a classical idiom of the aristocratic villa, retirement from worldly affairs, and leisure for study, and the Early Christian idiom of eremitical life.

The monastic ethics that came to be fully developed in the hagiography of Lupus of

Ferrières has its roots in the inscriptions of Alcuin, who employed texts to define the relationship between the physical, the bearing and habits of the monastic body, and the moral, the measure of his virtue, particularly regarding his studiousness and his submission to communal life, and his closeness to God. The leading monastic thinkers did not have to reinvent

Carolingian monasticism to achieve this shift in focus. They could find their inspiration in the work of their predecessors such as Alcuin, Paul the Deacon, and Hrabanus Maurus.

The literary works of Carolingian monastic scholars examined in this dissertation also demand that we reconsider long-standing scholarly assumptions regarding Carolingian monasticism, the monastic reforms of the eighth and ninth century, and the sophistication of early medieval literary output. Chapter 1 demonstrated how Alcuin used inscriptions to 176 reshaped architectural spaces and literally inscribe them with new meanings. Chapter 3 again looked at the parallels that monks drew between architecture and writing. The imitation of

Roman spolia in manuscript illumination points to the parallel between the appropriation of

Roman art and architecture and the appropriation of Roman literature. In both cases, the use of an ancient building block in a new composition, constituted, not an effort at reproduction and repetition, but of retelling and reinterpretation. Furthermore, both architectural and literary works were conceptualized as structures erected from smaller building blocks and the composition of these blocks was important for conveying the full meaning of the final work to its audience. This hermeneutic model, derived from architecture, informed monastic literary study and production and scriptural commentary. Writers could employ texts that evoked a former, esteemed cultural context, but inscribe the allusion with a new layer of meaning, or even an inverted, contradictory, or ironic meaning. The signification depended on recognition both of the former context and the aggregate meaning within the new context.

Chapters 2 and 4 considered literary works, particularly Carolingian adaptations of saints’ vitae. These chapters demonstrate the agency of Carolingian monastic authors in shaping the intellectual and cultural world of the monastery. This observation demands a reconsideration of the Carolingian monastic reforms, the scholarship on which has long emphasized the role of the Carolingian rulers and the royal court and not devoted much attention to the work of scholars in the monasteries and the cultural and educational reforms they were effecting within the monastic community. This dissertation also argues that

Carolingian monastic authors had a sophisticated literary consciousness that modern scholarship have not given adequate attention.

Carolingian monks used literary works that emphasized their withdrawal from worldly affairs as a way to gain advantages from the Carolingian rulers and important aristocratic families in order to ensure the protection of their communities and their way of life. Through the appropriation of the classical literary canon, monastic scholars accessed the symbolic 177 language that the Carolingian rulers used to articulate their own power and authority. Monastic authors fitted these works to into the cultural and context of the monastery in order to acquire for the monastic community the cultural capital that the body of Roman literature carried in terms of tradition, antiquity and social prestige. To ensure that this status remained uniquely monastic, monastic reformers separated the monastic school from the lay school, and in the former, learning was integrated into the fabric of daily life within the monastery, in order to make it inseparable not only from the possessor of those skills, but also from the cultural and ethical setting of the monastery. The internal reform efforts revealed through the study of monastic literary works ensured that monastic life did not devolve to a mere arm for implementation of the Carolingian royal program aimed at societal and cultural cohesion of the

Frankish lands. Monks retained the distance and social status necessary to develop their communities and redefine themselves with a reasonable degree of autonomy as Carolingian political stability crumbled, a factor that ensured the continued vitality and versatility of monastic life in medieval Europe. Appendix 1 179

Versus in laude Sancti Benedicti – Paul the Deacon, late eighth century.

His quoque diebus beatissimus Benedictus pater et prius in loco qui Sublacus dicitur, qui ab urbe Roma quadraginta milibus abest, et postea in castro Casino, quod Arx appellatur, et magnae vitae meritis et apostolicis virtutibus effulsit. Cuius vitam, sicut notum est, beatus papa Gregorius in suis Dialogis suavi sermone composuit. Ego quoque pro parvitate ingenii mei ad honorem tanti patris singula eius miracula per singula distica elegiaco metro hoc modo contexui:

1 Ordiar unde tuos, sacer o Benedicte, triumphos, Virtutum cumulos ordiar unde tuos? Euge, beate pater, meritum qui nomine prodis, Fulgida lux secli, euge, beate pater! 5 Nursia, plaude satis tanto sublimis alumno; Astra ferens mundo, Nursia, plaude satis! O puerile decus, transcendens moribus annos Exuperansque senes, o puerile decus! Flos, paradise, tuus despexit florida mundi; 10 Sprevit opes Romae flos, paradise, tuus. Vas pedagoga tulit diremptum pectore tristi; Laeta reformatum vas pedagoga tulit; Urbe vocamen habens tyronem cautibus abdit; Fert pietatis opem Urbe vocamen habens. 15 Laudibus antra sonant mortalibus abdita cunctis; Cognita, Christe, tibi laudibus antra sonant. Frigora, flabra, nives perfers tribus impiger annis; Tempnis amore Dei frigora, flabra, nives. Fraus veneranda placet, pietatis furta probantur. 20 Qua sacer altus erat, fraus veneranda placet. Signat adesse dapes agapes, sed lividus obstat; Nil minus alma fides signat adesse dapes. Orgia rite colit, Christo qui accommodat aurem; Abstemium pascens, orgia rite colit. 25 Pabula grata ferunt avidi ad spelea subulci; Pectoribus laetis pabula grata ferunt. Ignis ab igne perit, lacerant dum viscera sentes; Carneus aethereo ignis ab igne perit. Pestis iniqua latens procul est deprensa sagaci; 30 Non tulit arma crucis pestis iniqua latens. Lenia flagra vagam sistunt moderamine mentem; Excludunt pestem lenia flagra vagam. Unda perennis aquae nativo e marmore manat; Arida corda rigat unda perennis aquae. 35 Gurgitis ima, calibs capulo divulse, petisti; Deseris alta petens gurgitis ima, calibs. Iussa paterna gerens dilapsus vivit in aequor; Currit vectus aquis iussa paterna gerens. Praebuit unda viam prompto ad praecepta magistri; 40 Cursori ignaro praebuit unda viam. Tu quoque, parve puer, raperis, nec occidis, undis; Testis ades verax tu quoque, parve puer. 180

Perfida corda gemunt stimulis agitata malignis; Tartareis flammis perfida corda gemunt. 45 Fert alimenta corax digitis oblata benignis; Dira procul iussus fert alimenta corax. Pectora sacra dolent inimicum labe peremptum; Discipuli excessum pectora sacra dolent. Lyris amoena petens ducibus comitaris opimis; 50 Coelitus adtraheris Lyris amoena petens. Anguis inique, furis, luco spoliatus et aris; Amissis populis, anguis inique, furis. Improbe sessor, abi, sine dentur marmora muris! Cogeris imperio; improbe sessor, abi! 55 Cernitur ignis edax falsis insurgere flammis, Nec tibi, gemma micans, cernitur ignis edax. Dum struitur paries, lacerantur viscera fratris; Sospes adest frater, dum struitur paries. Abdita facta patent, patulo produntur edaces; 60 Muneris accepti abdita facta patent. Saeve tyranne, tuae frustrantur retia fraudis; Frena capis vitae, saeve tyranne, tuae. Moenia celsa Numae nullo subruentur ab hoste; Turbo, ait, evertet moenia celsa Numae. 65 Plecteris hoste gravi, ne lites munus ad aram; Munera fers aris; plecteris hoste gravi. Omnia septa gregis praescitum est tradita genti; Gens eadem reparat omnia septa gregis. Fraudis amice puer, suado captaris ab ydro; 70 Ydro non caperis, fraudis amice puer. Mens tumefacta, sile, tacita et ne carpe videntem! Cuncta patent vati; mens tumefacta, sile! Pellitur atra fames delatis caelitus escis; Nilominus mentis pellitur atra fames. 75 Pectora cuncta stupent, quod eras sine corpore praesens; Quod per visa mones, pectora cuncta stupent. Vocis ad imperium tempnunt dare frena loquelis; E bustis fugiunt vocis ad imperium. Vocis ad imperium sacris non esse sinuntur; 80 Intersunt sacris vocis ad imperium. Tellus hiulca sinu corpus propellit humatum; Iussa tenet corpus tellus hiulca sinu. Perfidus ille draco mulcet properare fugacem; Sistit iter vetitum perfidus ille draco. 85 Exitiale malum capitis decussit honorem; It procul imperiis exitiale malum. Fulva metalla pius, nec habet, promittit egenti; Caelitus excepit fulva metalla pius. Tu miserande, cutem variant cui fella colubrae, 90 Incolumem recipis, tu miserande, cutem. Aspera saxa vitrum rapiunt, nec frangere possunt; Inlesum servant aspera saxa vitrum. Cur, promoconde, times stillam praebere lechiti? 181

Dolia, cerne, fluunt; cur, promoconde, times? 95 Unde medela tibi, spes est cui nulla salutis? Qui semper perimis, unde medela tibi? Ah lacrimande senex, hostili concidis ictu; Ictu sed resipis, ah lacrimande senex. Barbara lora manus ignaras criminis arcent; 100 Sponte sua fugiunt barbara lora manus. Ille superbus equo reboans clamore minaci, Stratus humi recubat ille superbus equo. Colla paterna ferunt extincti viscera nati; Viventem natum colla paterna ferunt. 105 Omnia vincit amor, vinxit soror imbre beatum; Somnus abest oculis; omnia vincit amor. Simplicitate placens instar petit alta columbae; Regna poli penetrat simplicitate placens. O nimis apte Deo, mundus cui panditur omnis, 110 Abdita qui lustras, o nimis apte Deo! Flammeus orbis habet iustum super aethera nantem; Quem pius ussit amor, flammeus orbis habet. Ter vocitatus adest testis novitatis habendus; Carus amore patris ter vocitatus adest. 115 Dux bone, bella monens exemplis pectora firmas, Primus in arma ruis, dux bone, bella monens. Congrua signa dedit vitae consortia linquens Ad vitam properans congrua signa dedit. Psalmicen assiduus numquam dabat otia plectro; 120 Sacra canens obiit psalmicen assiduus. Mens quibus una fuit, tumulo retinentur eodem; Gloria par retinet, mens quibus una fuit. Splendida visa via est facibus stipata coruscis; Qua sacer ascendit splendida visa via est. 125 Rupea septa petens nancta est errore salutem; Errorem evasit rupea septa petens. Poemata parva dedit famulus pro munere supplex; Exul, inops, tenuis poemata parva dedit. Sint, precor, apta tibi, caelestis tramitis index; 130 O Benedicte pater, sint, precor, apta tibi! Nunc, venerande pater, cunctis celeberrime saeclis, Mitis adesto gregi nunc, venerande pater. Funde benigne preces, caveat quo noxia vitae; Quo vitam capiat, funde benigne preces. 135 Vincula solve mei solita virtute piacli; Pectoris et plectri vincula solve mei. Arce piis meritis varias a corde figuras; Desidiam et somnos arce piis meritis. Currere cede viam tua per vesitigia sursum; 140 Nil remorante fide currere cede viam. Guttura claude lupi semper lacerare parati; Ne male me rapiat, guttura claude lupi. Cor labiumque meum fac laudent cuncta creantem; Christum habeant semper cor labiumque meum. 182

145 Pestifer ille draco mea ne procul intima turbet, Nonque mihi occurrat pestifer ille draco. Me tua sancta phalanx habeat post funera carnis; Oro, ne excludat me tua sancta phalanx. Omnia nempe potes meriti pro lampade summi; 150 Magnus amici dei, omnia nempe potes. Perfice cuncta, precor, per eum quem semper amasti; Dulcis amande pater, perfice cuncta, precor. Sit tibi laus et honor, pietas immensa, per aevumj, Qui tam ira facis, sit tibi laus et honor. Appendix 2 184

XCIII. De schola et scholasticis. (Tours) XCIII. De schola et scholasticis. Hic pueri discant senioris ab ore magistri, Here may boys learn from the mouth of an older teacher, Hymnidicas laudes ut resonare queant. So they may be able to echo hymns of praise. Hauriat os tenerum lymphas devote salutis, Let the tender mouth faithfully drink in healthful springs, Forsan in ecclesia ne sileat senior. Lest perchance the elder mouth fall silent in church. Sunt anni juvenum habiles addiscere quidquam: The years of youth are suited to learning anything: Usus in antiquis postulat Ecclesiae, The custom of the Church in ancient things demands Instruat in studiis juvenum bona tempora doctor, That the teacher instruct the ripeness of youth in his studies, Nam fugiunt anni more fluentis aquae. For the years flee away in the manner of flowing water. Annosus sylvis quercus vix flectitur unquam, The age-old oak in the forest hardly ever bends, Sed frangit hominis dextra potentis eam. But the right hand of the strong man breaks it. Nam nec senior multis adsueta rapinis For the elder will not place under the yoke Sub juga nullatenus fortia colla dabit. Necks still not strong or accustomed to many prunings. Nec bene namque senex poterit ediscere, per quem And nor will the old man be well able to learn, in so far as Tondentem in gremium candida barba cadit. The white beard falls into his lap. Esto pius, pueris studiosus et esto magister, Be a pious master and devoted to your boys. Vos vestros, pueri, semper amate patres. And you, boys, always love your fathers. Ut maneat nobis dulcis benedictio Patris, So that the sweet blessing of our Father will remain, Et ne nam natus mente tenente duos. [text is corrupt here] XCIV. Ad musaeum libros scribentium. (Tours) XCIV. Ad musaeum libros scribentium. Hic sedeant sacrae scribentes famina legis, Here sit those writing the texts of sacred laws. Nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata Patrum. And also the sacred dictates of the Holy Fathers. Haec interserere caveant sua frivola verbis, May they take care not to sow into these their frivolous words, Frivola nec propter erret et ipsa manus: And that hand does not err on account of frivolity either: Correctosque sibi quaerant studiose libellos, May they eagerly seek for themselves corrected books. Tramite quo recto penna volantis eat. Wherein the quill may go along the right path. Per cola distinguant proprios, et commata sensus, May they punctuate and separate words properly, Et punctos ponant ordine quosque suo. And place the periods in their proper place. Ne vel falsa legat, taceat vel forte repente, Lest the reader in Church, should either read false things, Ante pios fratres, lector in Ecclesia. Or perchance suddenly fall silent before the pious brothers. 185

Est opus egregium sacros jam scribere libros, To write holy books is now an esteemed labor, Nec mercede sua scriptor et ipse caret. The scribe himself does not go without his wages. Fodere quam vites, melius est scribere libros, It is better to write books than to dig up vines. Ille suo ventri serviet, iste animae. The latter serves the belly, the former the soul. Vel nova, vel vetera poterit proferre magister Any teacher who reads the writings of the Holy Fathers Plurima, quisque legit dicta sacrata Patrum. Will be able to preach many old things and many new ones.

XCV. (Tours) XCV.

Quisque legens versus per celsa palatia curris, You who run around reading the verses in these hallowed halls, Semper habeto dei nomen in ore tuo. Will always have the name of God on your lips. Et dum lingua pias resonat per carmina laudes, And while your tongue sounds pious praises in poetry, Ferveat illius pectus amore tuum. May your heart burn with love of him. Dum tu pulchra domus pedibus solaria scandes, As you climb the lovely porches of the house, Immemor haud esto scandere mente polum. Do not forget to ascend to heaven in your mind. Sol rutilans radiis domibus splendescit in altis, The sun’s shining rays grow brighter in the higher rooms, Lumine perpetuo Christus in arce poli. Christ shines with perpetual light in the stronghold of heaven. Ut sol illustrat totus praefulgidus orbem, As the sun in all its glory illumines the earth, Sic fulgent sancti semper in arce patris. So do the holy ones shine always in the house of the father. Sunt a sole domus celsae solaria dicta, As solaria of the heavenly house are so called because of the sun, A Christo sanctum nomen habemus item. We too have a holy name on account of Christ. Si te delectet manibus habitatio facta, If the dwellings made by hands are pleasing to you, Non manibus factam plus tibi quaere domum. Seek all the more for yourself the home not made by hands. Quicquid in orbe manus hominis construxerat unquam, Whatever the hand of man has ever built on earth, Omnia nam pereunt in cineresque ruunt. All this is now ruined and lies in ashes. Quicquid honoris habent sancti per gaudia caeli, Whatever honors the saints have because of the joy of heaven, Cum Christo pariter semper habere queunt. They always are able to have in union with Christ. Quo te ducat amor, rapiat, trahat, omnibus horis, Whither love may lead you, seize you, draw you, at any time, Et rape me tecum, quaeso, tuis precibus. Seize me with you, I beg you, by your prayers. Sit tibi, sitque mihi Christus currentibus illuc That Christ may be with you and with me as we run there, Protector, rector, lux, via, vita, salus. As protector, guide, light, way, life, and health. 186

XCVI. Ad dormitorium. (Tours) XCVI. Ad dormitorium.

Qui vim ventorum, pelagi qui mitigat undas, He who softens the force of the winds and the waves of the sea, Israel qui servat, nullo qui dormiat aevo; Who keeps watch over Israel, the one who sleeps in no age; Fratribus hac requiem dulcem concedat in aula, May he grant sweet rest to the brothers in this hall, Et quos immittit somno vis nigra timores, And those fears which black force sets loose during sleep, Compescat clemens Domini, rogo, dextra potentis. May the merciful right hand of the powerful Lord, I ask, restrain them. Quique diem statuit homini sub luce labore, And he who established the day for the toil of man in daylight, Noctibus et requiem concessit corpore fesso, Also granted rest in the nights for the weary body, Ad laudemque suam faciet consurgere sanos. That he may make them rise again healthy to his glory.

XCVII. Ad latrinium (Tours) XCVII. Ad latrinium

Luxuriam ventris, lector, cognosce vorantis, Recognise, reader, the extravagance of your greedy belly, Putrida qui sentis stercora nare tuo. You who smell with your nose the rotten dung. Ingluviem fugito ventris, quapropter in ore, Flee from the gluttony of your stomach, so that in your mouth, Tempore sit certo sobria vita tibi. The sober life will be yours in good time.

Ubi libri custodiuntur (?) Ubi libri custodiuntur

Parvula tecta tenent coelestis dona sophiae, Little cubbies hold the gifts of heavenly wisdom, Quae tu, lector ovans, pectore disce pio. Which you, rejoicing reader, learn dutifully by heart. Omnibus est gazis melior sapientia donis, Wisdom is better than all gifts of treasure, Quam modo qui sequitur lucis habebit iter. He who pursues it will have a well-lit path. 187

De via duplici ad scholam et cauponam. (St-Amand) De via duplici ad scholam et cauponam.

Hic tu per stratum pergens subsiste, viator, Stop here, traveller, as you walk along this corridor, Versiculos paucos studiosa perlege mente. Read over these few meagre lines in your keen mind. In via, quam cernis, duplici ditatur honore: On the way, as you see, you are enriched by a twofold honor: Haec ad cauponem ducit potare volentem: This takes you to the wine cellar should you want to drink: Elige, quod placeat tibi nunc iter, ecce viator, Choose, what way pleases you, oh traveller, Aut potare mecum, sacros aut discere libros. Whether to drink with me, or to study the holy books. Si potare velis, nummos praestare debebis: If you wish to drink, you must hand over coins; Discere si cupias, gratis, quod quaeris, habebis. Should you desire to learn, without cost, you will have what you seek. 188

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