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The Rome of Two Northern Pilgrims: Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury and Abbot Nikolás of Munkathverá

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Francis Peabody Magoun Jr.
Francis Peabody Magoun Jr.
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The pilgrim-diaries associated with Sigeric, archbishop of Canterbury (990–994), and Nikolás, abbot of the Benedictine monastery at Munkaþverá, Iceland (1155–1159), commend themselves to historians of ecclesiastical Rome on more than one count. Both diaries include itineraries unusually detailed for their periods and in this regard are unique for the countries of origin and valuable in regard to the history of the regions traversed. More than this, and of particular moment for the historian of the medieval Church, both diaries devote considerable attention to sights seen in the Eternal City. Here these little works offer a welcome, in a sense intimate, view of Rome of the periods in question; for they tell us one very important thing that the medieval Baedekers do not, namely, just what two individuals elected to see or were shown or, equally significant, what two men chose to note down or especially remembered in the course of their tour of the city. The English diary with its systematic list of Roman churches — the titles often in a dubious Latin (see the individual items, especially pp. 275–276 below) — furnishes us, furthermore, with a little catalogue that, coming between the list of Leo III (806) and the list that the papal chamberlain Cencio Savelli (later Pope Honorius III) compiled in 1192, fills an obvious gap. The Icelandic diary, though less important in this regard, gains in interest by including a number of secular monuments and considerable detail about the churches, wanting in the English work. Both texts are worthy of more study than has been devoted to them.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 33 , Issue 4 , October 1940 , pp. 267 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1940

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References

1 To save space, I have from the outset used heavily abbreviated titles of works cited; a key to these abbreviations will be found under § IV, pp. 288–289.

2 For example the Einsiedeln Itinerary, the Mirabilia urbis Romae, and the Graphia aureae urbis Romae; for editions see Paetow, L. J., A Guide to the Study of Medieval History (2d ed., New York, 1931), p. 374Google Scholar. On Einsiedeln see further Hülsen, pp. iii–iv and pp. 4–5 for list of Roman churches. DAchL under “ Itinéraires ” col. 1841–1922. To these earlier guide-books I should like to add in passing Cao, G. B., “Il viaggio in Italia di un pellegrino inglese nel 1344,” Bollettino della società geografica italiana, 6th Ser., IV (1927), 476–496Google Scholar; Mills, C. A. ed., þe Solace of Pilgrimes, a Description of Rome, circa A.D. 1450, by John Capgrave (Oxford, 1911)Google Scholar; and Woodruff, C. E. ed., A XVth Century Guide-Book to the Principal Churches of Rome, compiled c. 1470 by William Brewyn (London, 1933).Google Scholar

3 For editions see Hülsen, pp. iv–v, list of churches, pp. 6–10.

4 For editions see Hülsen, pp. v–vi, list of churches, pp. 10–17.

5 Thorpe's and Plummer's F-text, at present being edited by Marie Hoffmann of Strassburg i. El. and myself. For a very careful study of the language of the OE portions of the text (late West-Saxon with numerous Kenticisms) see Fernquist, C.-H., Studier i modern Språkvetenskap XIII (Uppsala, 1937), 41–103Google Scholar, summary pp. 52–53, § 4. It may be noted here that, while the present annal does not occur in other versions of the Old-English Chronicle, a very similar entry (under what is surely the correct date, 990) does occur in the Easter Table (a Canterbury document) in Brit. Mus. Ms. Cotton Caligula A. XV, fol. 132v: “990: Hēr Sīrīc biscop fōr tō Rōme,” ed. Liebermann, Felix, Ungedruckte anglonormannische Geschichtsquellen (Strassburg i. El., 1879), p. 3Google Scholar. The present annal, in reflecting a specialized interest in Canterbury affairs, is characteristic of F, beyond all question a Canterbury book; see Plummer, Charles, Two Saxon Chronicles parallel II (Oxford, 1899), xxxvi § 28.Google Scholar

6 On numerous English pilgrimages to Rome in the seventh and eighth centuries see Moore, pp. 8–89, 126–127 (chronological table); for the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries see Jung, pp. 15–31; and for the twelfth Schaeffer, P. B., Englishmen in Italy in the Twelfth Century: Rome (unpublished Harvard diss., 1923).Google Scholar

7 For a biographical notice, see Wm. Hunt in The Dictionary of National Biography under “Sigeric or Siric”; also Hook, pp. 431–439, and for scattered notes on Sigeric's association with Ælfric, abbot and great English writer, see White, C. L., Ælfric: A New Study of his Life and Writings (Yale Studies in English II, Boston, 1898), Index under “Sigeric.”Google Scholar

8 The period of Otto III and Crescentius I; for a brief statement on this period see Homo, Léon, Rome médiévale 476–1420 (Paris, 1934), pp. 85–86, also Hook, p. 433. For Italy in the second half of the tenth century see EI XIX, map facing p. 808 (in art. “Italia”).Google Scholar

9 See Stubbs, p. 391, n. 1 bottom; Charles Plummer, op. cit., II, 173 (under the year 989). Miller, p. 31, thinks that the journey could scarcely have been made before the spring of 991; so Hook, p. 433, but cf. p. 434, fn. line 3 for the 990 date; also White, op. cit., p. 52.

10 A partial analysis of the contents in Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde V (1880), 637–640.Google Scholar

11 Next comes, as far as I know, the diary of Sæwulf, A.D. 1102–1103, text and translation, ed. Wm. Brownlow, R. in the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, Publ. 21, London, 1892 — obviously post-Conquest.Google Scholar

12 Some use has been made of this important little document by students of medieval travel-routes, e.g. Oehlmann, E., “Die Alpenpässe im Mittelalter,” Jahrb. f. schweiz. Geschichte III (1878)Google Scholar, especially p. 250; Schulte, Aloys, Geschichte d. mittelalterl. Handels u. Verkehrs zwischen Westdeutschland u. Italien mit Anschluss von Venedig I (Leipzig, 1900), 67Google Scholar; and Tyler, J. E., The Alpine Passes — the Middle Ages (926–1260) (Oxford, 1930), pp. 8–9Google Scholar, 15. These writers, and sporadically a few others, in the main follow Stubbs's identification of the stopping places (submansiones) of the itinerary part of the diary. There has, however, been only one thorough-going study of the itinerary, in this case limited to the stretch between Rome and Lucca, namely that by Jung, Julius, “Das Itinerar des Erzbischofs Sigeric von Canterbury und die Strasse von Rom über Siena nach Luca, “Mittheilungen d. Instituts f. österreichische Geschichtsforschung XXV (1904), 1–90Google Scholar; see especially pp. 15–16 for a pointed comment on the comparative neglect of this document. For a detailed analysis of the itinerary proper see Magoun, , “An English Pilgrim-Diary of the Year 990,” Mediaeval Studies (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto), II (1940), 231–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 See Henel, Heinrich, Studien zum ae. Computus (in Max Förster's Beiträge zur engl. Philologie, Vol. XXVI, Leipzig, 1934), p. 23Google Scholar and fn. 64. I may add that the hand of the diary is the same as that of the immediately preceding list of tenth century popes and the marginal list of English bishops. This list of bishops is printed by Pauli, and Liebermann, in Neues Archiv d. Gesellschaft f. ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde V (1880), 639–640Google Scholar and, with some additional discussion, by Duchesne, Louis in Le Liber Pontificalis II (Paris, 1892), xvGoogle Scholar. Ælfric's De Temporibus, discussed by Henel, immediately follows the diary on fol. 23r. Stubbs's statement (p. 391, n. 1) that “the Ms. is contemporary with Sigeric's pontificate” can no longer be viewed as right.

14 Not hitherto discussed beyond a very sketchy account in Mann, H. K., The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages IV (London, 1910), 380–382.Google Scholar

15 See footnote 1 above.

16 Note, for example, the materials and references in Werlauff 35–36, Riant 80 ff., and Oehlmann III, 257–267 (“Die Romfahrten der Isländer”).

17 See Werlauff 4–5, Kålund, p. XIX, and Jónsson, Finnur, Den oldnorske og oldislandske Litteraturs Historie, II (2d ed., Copenhagen, 1923), 113–114, 935–936. The earlier identification of Nikolás with þingey has long since been abandoned.Google Scholar

18 The text of the diary proper evidently runs in Werlauff from p. 15, l. 3 to p. 32, l. 9; in Kålund from p. 12, l. 16 to p. 23, l. 21; cf. Kålund, p. XIX.

19 By Werlauff in 1821 with commentary, pp. 34, § 18 ff.; Kålund in 1908 with some commentary, pp. XXI-XXIV and additional commentary in Aarbøger, pp. 61–105.

20 Ed. cit., pp. 15–32, parallel to the Icelandic text.

21 In Aarbøger, pp. 54–61.

22 In an Old-Icelandic anthology in preparation by H. G. Leach.

23 Kålund, p. XIX.

24 On the Rome of Frederick Barbarossa see Homo 112–114.

25 Kålund, p. II.

26 Ibid., p. XXXIII.

27 Besides Riant and Oehlmann mentioned in fn. 16 above, the diary has been used sporadically but not in a fashion to advance our interpretation of the text. I hope to publish shortly an article “The Pilgrim-Diary of Nikolás of Munkaþverá: the Road to Rome.”

28 This church has, of course, existed in many forms and modifications. Nikolás would have seen and had in mind the reconstruction of 1046–48 with its dome in the form of a truncated cone, producing a so-called eye of about 20 ft. in diameter vs. the larger eye (30 ft. in diameter) of the Pantheon. See Vincent, Huges and Abel, F.-M., Jérusalem II, Pt. i of the text (Paris, 1914), 294Google Scholar, fig. 138 and Vogüé, Melchior de, Les Eglises de la Terre Sainte (Paris, 1860)Google Scholar, Pl. IX, facing p. 177. I am indebted for these illustrative references to my colleague, Professor K. J. Conant.

29 From the late tenth century there are two clear instances in Old English of the use of “catacomb(s)” in the sense described above, that is, with reference to S. Sebastiano fuori: (1) in the Blickling Homilies (ed. Morris, R., EETS, Orig. Ser. 73, London, 1880, p. 193Google Scholar, ll. 11–12): on þǣre stōwe Catacumbe, þȳ wege þe hāte Appia “in that place (called) ‘Catacombs,' on the road that is called Appia” and (2) in Ælfric's homily on St. Sebastian (ed. Skeat, W. W., EETS, Orig. Ser. 76, London, 1881, p. 146Google Scholar, ll. 464–465): and hine ferian þanon tō Catacumbas “and to carry him (St. Sebastian) thence to Catacombs.”

30 On ON nál “obelisk” and some other Icelandic words used here see Magoun, “On Six Old-Icelandic Words” to appear in a forthcoming issue of Modern Language Notes.