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Rodulfus Glaber and the Cluniacs

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

John France
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Extract

The two works of Rodulfus Glaber, the Histories and the Life of St William, have always been held to be of special importance because of the supposed Cluniac origins of this writer. Glaber is commonly referred to as a Cluniac monk, as can be seen from the title of an important modern series of articles about him, while Delaruelle's famous essay about Cluny and Holy War leans heavily upon his ‘Cluniac connections’. The lack of literary sources about the history of Cluny in the reign of Odilo accounts in part for the extensive use of his Histories by the numerous corps of historians of Cluny. By contrast the Life has been somewhat neglected, and indeed the literature on St William of Dijon in English is very limited. It is important, therefore, to discover in what sense, if any, Glaber can be called a Cluniac.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , October 1988 , pp. 497 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

Rodulfus Glaber, Historiarum Libri Quinque with Vita domni Willelmi abbatis, ed. and trans. J. France, forthcoming. The Vita was originally edited by Bulst, Neithard in Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters xxx (1974), 450–87.Google Scholar All references to the Historiarum will be to the edition of Prou, M., Paris 1886.Google Scholar

1 Vogelsang, M., ‘Der Cluniacensische Chronist Rodulfus Glaber: ein Beitrage zur Clunizensischen Geschichtsschreibung’, Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte des Benediktiner-Ordens und seiner Zweige lxvii (1956), 25–38Google Scholar, 277–97; lxi (1960), 151–85. Delaruelle, E., ‘The crusading idea in Cluniac literature of the eleventh century’, in Hunt, N. (ed.), Cluniac Monasticism in the Central Middle Ages, London 1971, 191–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The modern study of St William is that of Bulst, N., Untersuchungen zu den Kloslerreformen Wilhelms von Dijon (962–1031), Bonn 1973Google Scholar, which has a very thorough bibliography.

3 Historiarum 5. i. 3.

4 Ibid. 4. iii. 6–8. Bukt, op. cit. 277, suggests that they travelled c. 1026–8.

5 In Vita, c. xiii Glaber says that, after one of his own ‘evil deeds’, fearing William's anger, he fled to ‘another monastery which was not under his control’; this was almost certainly Cluny.

6 Historiarum 5. i. 3.

7 Analecta Divionensia, ed. Bougaud, L. V. E. and Garnier, J., Dijon 1875, 162.Google Scholar

8 Vita, c. xiii.

9 Hislonarum 5. i. 8.

10 The idea that Glaber revised the Historiarum after he had been at Cluny was first suggested by Sackur, E., ‘Studien über Rudolfus Glaber’, Neues Archiv xiv (1889), 379–418Google Scholar; this has been powerfully reinforced by Garand, M.-C., ‘Un manuscrit d'auteur de Raoul Glaber; observations codicologiques et paléographiques sur le ms. BN latin, 10912’, Scriptorium xxxvii (1983), 5–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In general I accept her conclusions, but internal evidence leads me to think that the original bk i, bk ii and perhaps a small part of bk iii were written at St Bénigne before Glaber reached Cluny.

11 Vila, c. xiii: ‘the many events which occurred with unusual frequency about the millennium of the Incarnation of Christ the Saviour’, I. preface. 1.

12 Ibid. I. preface, 1.

13 See above n. 6.

14 Historiarum 2. viii. 15–16. On Abbot Helderic and his reign see the account of Guy of Auxerre, Gesta abbalum sancti Germani Autissiodorensis, ed. P. Labbé, in Novae Bibliothecae Manuscriptorum Librorum ii. 570–2, which is largely based on Glaber. On this abbot's relationship with St Mayol, see Syrus, Vita sancti Maioli, PL cxxxvii. 752, 764.

15 On the status of St Bénigne at Dijon see Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum vii-i. 101–14; Hallinger, K., Gorze-Cluny, Studien zu den monastischen Lebensformen und Gegensätzen im Hochmittelalter, Rome 1950, 460Google Scholar; Bulst, Untersuchungen, 30–45.

16 In Vila, c. xiii Glaber says that he interrupted the Historiarum to write his biography of St William; in 4. iv. g he speaks of it as already completed.

17 France, J., ‘The Divine Quaternity of Rodulfus Glaber’, Studia Monastica xviii (1975), 283–94Google Scholar; Dutton, P. E., ‘Raoul Glaber's “De divina quaternitate”: an unnoticed reading of Eriugena's translation of the Ambigua of Maximus the Confessor’, Medieval Studies xlii (1980), 431–543CrossRefGoogle Scholar, provides a fascinating analysis of the sources of Glaber's ideas.

18 Historiarum 1. iv. 9; 1. v. 23.

19 Ibid. 2. viii. 15–17.

20 There is much personal reminiscence about the past, such as that mentioned above, n. 3; Garand, ‘Un manuscrit’, 24, suggests that this is written in the shaky hand of an elderly person.

21 Historiarum 1. iv. 9; 2. vi. 14; 3. i. 6; 3. v. 18; Vila, c. v. vi.

22 Historiarum I. v. 23; 5. i. 13.

23 Ibid. 3. v. 17–18.

24 Vita, c. v. Bulst, Untersuchungen, 26, suggests that Mayol took William to Cluny in 987.

25 Vita, c. vi. This sentence of Glaber's may show knowledge of the Testamentum Bernonis abbatis: ‘to keep staunchly united, to observe with the same exactness as before the established usage in chanting with psalms, in keeping silence, in the quality of food and raiment, and above all in the contempning of personal property’, PL cxxxiii. 857; trans. Evans, J., Monastic Life at Cluny, Oxford 1930, 9.Google Scholar

26 Bulst, op. cit. 30–45.

27 Vita, c. vi.

28 Historiarum 3. v. 18.

29 Vita, c. x.

30 PL cxlii. 954–5.

31 Ibid. 911.

32 Bulst, Untersuchungen, 186–91.

33 Analecta Divionensia, 173.

34 Bulst, op. cit. 43.

35 Ibid. 147–85.

36 Ibid. 115–46.

37 Hallinger, Gorze-Kluny, 445.

38 PL cxli. 775.

39 Hourlier, J., ‘Cluny et la notion d'Ordre Religieux’, in A Cluny. Congrès scientifique en honneur des saints abbés Odo et Odilon (hereinafter cited as A Cluny) (Société des Amis de Cluny, 1950), 219–26.Google Scholar On the origins of the customs see the comment of John of Salerno: ‘Ipse autem pater Heuticius [St Benedict of Aniane] institutor fuit harum consuetudinum, quae hactenus in nostris monasteriis habentur’, Vita Sancii Odonis, PL cxxxiii. 533; Historiarum 3. v. 17–18.

40 P. Cousin, ‘L'expansion clunisienne sous l'abbatiat de Saint Odilon’, in A Cluny, 186–202.

41 See Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum x. vii. I, vii. 2; and for a summary, Valous, G. de, Le Monackisme clunisien des origines au XV siècle, Paris 1970, i. 19–20.Google Scholar

42 Historiarum 2. iv. 5–7.

43 For an account of the quarrel and an analysis of its importance, see Cowdrey, H. E. J., The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform, Oxford 1970, 22–36.Google Scholar

44 Historiarum 2. v. 9.

45 Ibid. I. iv. 14.

46 Constable, G., ‘Cluniac administrators and administration in the twelfth century’, in idem, Cluniac Studies, ii, London 1980, 18–30.Google Scholar Peter the Venerable sometimes avoided the term ‘order’ and referred to the Cluniac corpus, as in Letter clxxxiv, 339, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Constable, G., Cambridge, Mass. 1967.Google Scholar

47 Hallinger, Gorze-Kluny, 767.

48 Vita, c. viiii, xi.

49 Ibid.c. vii.

50 Cousin, ‘L'expansion clunisienne’, 188.

51 Leclercq, J., ‘Pour une histoire de la vie à Cluny’, Revue d'Histoire Ecclésiastique lvii (1962), 385–408, 783–812.Google Scholar

52 The view that Cluny was hostile to culture is expressed by Hallinger, K., ‘Le climat spirituel des premiers temps de Cluny’, Revue Mabillon xlvi (1956), 117–40Google Scholar, and opposed by Leclercq, J., ‘Cluny, fut-il ennemi de la culture?’, Revue Mabillon xlvii (1957), 172–82.Google Scholar

53 Glaber's pride in his own learning is evident in the biographical passage in Historiarum 5. i. 3. On the other hand he tells us about Vilgardus, who was led into heresy by love of learning, 2. xii. 23, and recalls that the blessed Hervé of Tours turned away from the classics because ‘most learn from such studies only pride’, 3. iv. 14. John of Salerno recounts a dream that St Odo once had of Virgil in which he was shown a vase of serpents, representing his works, PL cxxxiii. 49.

54 K. Hallinger, ‘The spiritual life of Cluny in the earliest days’, in Hunt, Cluniac Monasticism, 29–55.