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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
In 1054, the Benedictine monk Berthold of Reichenau took up the task of continuing the world Chronicle compiled by his friend and teacher Hermann of Reichenau. The key event recorded for this year is the death of Hermann himself, with Berthold highlighting the monk’s great learning, his good-natured dealings with others, but above all the particular devotion to reading and writing which he pursued despite great physical disability. Even on his deathbed, we are told, Hermann’s mind was focused on matters textual. Throughout the night he was caught up in a kind of vision or ecstasy, during which he was able to read – and re-read – the lost letter, much beloved by the early Fathers, of Cicero To Hortensius. Running back and forth through the text, he displayed the same ‘memory and knowledge’ of the pagan author that one might expect of a Christian reader in recalling the Lord’s Prayer. He was also able to set forth the remaining part of his own unfinished work, his poetic dialogue On the Eight Principal Vices, as if he were ‘composing’ and at the same time ‘reading repeatedly’ both the sense and words of the text. As Berthold claims, his master had always ‘affected such great knowledge of both worldly and spiritual letters, that all those who came from everywhere were held stupefied and in wonder’.
* I would like to acknowledge the support of Universities UK and the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester for funding the doctoral research on which this paper is based. My thanks must also go to Kate Cooper, Conrad Leyser, Anne Kurdock, Martin Ryan and Rosa Vidal for reading earlier versions of the paper.
1 Die Chroniken Bertholds von Reichenau und Bernolds von St. Blasien 1054–1100, ed. I. S. Robinson, Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 14 (Darmstadt, 2002), 163–74 for the entry on Hermann. See also Hermann, Chronicon, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS V (Hannover, 1844), 74–133.
2 Also known as Hermannus Contractus or Hermann the Lame, Hermann’s disability was most likely caused by a motor neuron disease. See C. Brunhölzl, ‘Gedänken zur Krankheit Hermanns von Reichenau (1019–1054)’, Sudhoffs Archiv zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte 83:2(1999), 239–43.
3 Cicero’s letter Ad Hortensium was known only in fragments in the Middle Ages and was most likely known to Hermann and Berthold only by reputation. See Borst, Arno, ‘Der Tod Hermanns des Lahmen’, Ritte über den Bodensee: Rückblick auf mittelalterliche Bewegungen (Bottighofen, 1992), 274–300 Google Scholar, at 285. Hermann’s vision recalls St Augustine’s reading of Cicero’s work, as well as St Jerome’s dream in which he was accused of being a devout Ciceronian rather than a Christian. See, respectively, Confessions, 3.7, and Epistula, 22.30.
4 Berthold, Chroniken, 171.
5 ‘et in tam plenaria divinarum et secularium litterarum peritia magnus effectus est, ut ab omnibus ad magisterium et doctrinam eius undique confluentibus stupori et admirationi haberetur.’ Ibid., 164.
6 C. H. Haskins described the eleventh century as that ‘obscure period of origins which holds the secret of the new movement’. See Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1927), 16. For a more recent analysis of the major issues and debates surrounding the idea of renaissance, see Swanson, R. N., The Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Manchester, 1999), esp. 12–39Google Scholar, on monastic versus secular schools.
7 For an overview of the eleventh-century reforms in their social contexts, see most recently Cushing, Kathleen G., Reform and the Papacy in the Eleventh Century: Spirituality and Social Change (Manchester, 2005)Google Scholar.
8 On the challenge posed by these new orders to Benedictine monasticism, see esp. van Engen, John, ‘“The Crisis of Cenobitism” Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050–1150’, Speculum 61: 2 (1986), 269–304 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also n. 51 below.
9 Southern, R. W., The Making of the Middle Ages (London, 1953)Google Scholar, 15 and 14; and, idem, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe, vol. 1 : Foundations (Oxford, 1995).
10 Moore, R. I., The First European Revolution c.970-1215 (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar, chs 4 and 5.
11 The phrase is taken from Theresa Gross-Diaz’s title, The Psalms Commentary of Gilbert of Poitiers: from ‘Lectio Divina’ to the Lecture Room (Leiden, 1996).
12 For an entry into the discussion and wider literature, see esp. Resnick, Irven M., ‘Attitudes Towards Philosophy and Dialectic During the Gregorian Reform’, Journal of Religious History 16(1990), 115–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 The classic account of these tensions is found in Leclercq, Jean, Love of Learning and the Desire for God: a Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catherine Misrahi (New York, 1982)Google Scholar.
14 On this continued presence of pagan authors in the medieval curriculum, see Reynolds, Susan, Medieval Reading: Grammar, Rhetoric and the Classical Text, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 27 (Cambridge, 1996), esp. 8–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 An edition of Hermann’s De octo vitiis principalibus is available at: http://www.mgh.de/~Poetae/Texte/Hermannus/Hermannus.pdf, accessed 8 June 2006. The text is based on Ernst Dümmler’s edition in Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum 13, NF 1 (Berlin, 1867) [hereafter: De octo], 385–434.1 would like to thank Carole Hill for help with translations.
16 Jaeger, C. Stephen, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe 950–1200 (Philadelphia, PA, 1994)Google Scholar, esp. Pt 1.
17 Hermann is best known to modern scholars as a proponent of the liberal arts and especially of the arts of the quadrivium, namely music, mathematics, astronomy and geometry. For an introduction to Hermann’s life and work, with useful bibliography, see Walter Berschin, ‘Hermann der Lahme: Leben und Werke in Übersicht’, in Berschin, Walter and Hellmann, Martin, eds, Hermann der Lahme: Gelehrter und Dicker (1013–1054) (Heidelberg, 2004), 15–31.Google Scholar
18 Regula Benedicti, Prologue (PL 66, 218).
19 For discussion of the vice tradition in general, see Bloomfield, Morton W., The Seven Deadly Sins: an Introduction to the History of a Religious Concept (East Lansing, MI, 1952)Google Scholar, and Newhauser, Richard, The Treatise on Vices and Virtues in Latin and the Vernacular, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 68 (Turnhout, 1993)Google Scholar. For Gregory’s model, see Moralia in Iob, 31: 45 (ed. Marc Adriaen, CCSL 143b [Turnhout, 1985], 1610–13).
20 The text as a whole comprises 1722 lines, the discussion of the vices, 403 lines.
21 For medieval conceptions of the Muses, see Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, Willard R., Bollingen Series 36 (New York, 1953), 228–46 Google Scholar, and more recently Ziolkowski, Jan, ‘Classical Influence on Medieval Latin Views of Poetic Inspiration’, in Godman, Peter and Murray, Oswyn, eds, Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition: Essays in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Oxford, 1990), 15–38.Google Scholar
22 On the ancient tradition of the erotic relationship between the author and his Muse, see, for example, Sharrock, Alison, ‘An A-musing Tale: Gender, Genre, and Ovid’s Battles with Inspiration in the Metamorphoses’, in Spentzou, Efrossini and Fowler, Don, eds, Cultivating the Muse: Struggles for Power and Inspiration in Classical Literature (Oxford, 2002), 207–27 Google Scholar, at 209.
23 De octo [lines], 16–17; 7; 9.
24 Thus Hermann directs ‘everyone’, both the Muse and the Sisters, to find another place to get the main discussion underway, urging them in clearly physical terms to ‘go now by foot, if you please, and do not delay’. De octo, 410–11.
25 Ibid., 393–6.
26 For a discussion of this theme in medieval art and literature, see Rudolf, R., Ars moriendi: von der Kunst des heilsamen Lebens und Sterbens (Cologne, 1957)Google Scholar, esp. 31 on Hermann.
27 Hermann’s De octo vitiis principalibus survives in Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 14 689, fols 25–37, produced at St Emmeram in the twelfth century. Fragments also survive in the more recently discovered Gotha, Memb. II 225, saec. XII (unkown provenance). For descriptions of the manuscripts, see Halm, Karl, Keinz, Friedrich, Meyer, Wilhelm, and Thomas, Georg, eds, Catalogus codicum latinorum Bibliothecae Regiae Monacensis secundum Andreae Schmetleri Indices: Tomi II Pars II Codices Num. 11001–15028 Complectens. Monachii A.M.D. CCC. LXXVI (Wiesbaden, 1968), 22 Google Scholar; and Hopf, Carl, Die abendländischen Handschriften der Forschungs- und Landesbibliothek Gotha, Kleinformatige Pergamenthandschriften Memb. II (Gotha, 1997), 111 Google Scholar. The monasteries shared a close liturgical relationship through the figure of the Bishop Wolfgang of Regensburg (d. 944), who had attended the monastic school at Reichenau and later supported the independence of the monastery of St Emmeram from the local bishopric. Wolfgang’s canonization c. 1052 was most likely supported by Hermann’s historia, which circulated together with a vita composed by Otloh of St Emmeram. See respectively, Historia Sancti Wolfgangi Episcopi Ratisbonensis: Einführung und Edition, ed. David Hilley, Musicological Studies 65/7, Historiae (Ottowa, 2002), and Otloni vita s. Wolfkangi episcopi, MGH SS IV (Hannover, 1841), 521–42.
28 See Bergmann, A., ‘Die Dichtung der Reichenau in Mittelalter,’ in Beyerle, Konrad, ed., Die Kultur der Abtei Reichenau: Erinnerungsschrift zur zwölfhundertsten Wiederkehr des Gründungsjahres des Inselklosters 724–1924, 2 vols (Munich, 1925), 2: 773–802 Google Scholar, at 750, and Arno Borst, Mönche am Bodenseee 610–1525 (Sigmaringen, 1978), 75–6.
29 See Hermann, Chronicon, 120, 121, and 130 (entries for the years 1021, 1032, and 1051). On the present impossibility of identifying the Sisters, see Theil, Bernhard, ed., Dos (freiweltliche)Damenstift Buchau am Federsee, Germania Sacra, NF 32 (Berlin, 1994), 52–3.Google Scholar
30 De octo, 61–2.
31 See Leyser, Karl J., Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Ottoman Saxony (London, 1979), 59–73 Google Scholar, and 156–68; Bodarwé, Katrinette, ‘Sanctimoniales litterae’: Schriftlichkeit und Bildung in den ottenischen Frauenkommunitäten Ganderdersheim, Essen und Quedlingburg, Quellen und Studien 10 (Münster, 2004), 5 on a ‘krisensituation’ for women’s monasticism; Parisse, Michael, ‘Die Frauenstifte und Frauenklöster in Sachsen vom 10. bis zur Mitte des 12. Jahrhunderts’, in Weinfurter, Stefan, ed., Die Salier und das Reich (Sigmaringen, 1991), 465–50 Google Scholar.
32 A principal driver behind this renewal was Abbot William of Hirsau, a former monk of St Emmeram, who was responsible for establishing and reforming a number of female communities in the region of southern Germany. See esp. Hotchin, Julie, ‘Female Religious Life and the Cura Monialium in Hirsau Monasticism, 1080 to 1150’, in Mews, Constant J., ed., Listen, Daughter, the “Speculum virginum” and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages (New York, 2001), 59–83.Google Scholar
33 For an extended discussion of the possible connections between Reichenau and other women’s houses in the German lands, see Williams, Hannah, ‘Authority and Pedagogy in Hermann of Reichenau’s De octo vitiis principalibus ’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Manchester, 2006, ch. 3.Google Scholar
34 Scholars have often been quick to suspect the existence of highly educated female readers and authors in the Middle Ages, with the most famous example being the debate that surrounded Heloise’s correspondence with Abelard. The scholarship on these letters is vast, but see esp. Clanchy, Michael, Abelard: a Medieval Life (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar; Mews, Constant J., The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France, trans. Chiavaroli, Neville and Mews, Constant J. (New York, 1999)Google Scholar; and idem, Abelard and Heloise (Oxford, 2005).
35 Calabrese, Michael, ‘Ovid and the Female Voice in the De Amore and the Letters of Abelard and Heloise’, Modern Philology 95: 1 (1997), 1–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 4.
36 See, for example, Woods, Marjorie Curry, ‘Boys Will Be Women: Musings on Classroom Nostalgia and the Chaucerian Audience(s)’, in Yeager, Robert F. and Morse, Charlotte C., eds, Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kobe (Asheville, NC, 2001), 143–66.Google Scholar
37 Enders, Jody, ‘Rhetoric, Coercion, and the Memory of Violence’, in Copeland, Rita, ed., Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1996), 24–55.Google Scholar
38 De odo, 296–7. For a discussion of these contrary images of women eleventh- and twelfth-century poetry, see Jaeger, C. Stephen, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia, PA, 1999), 82–106.Google Scholar
39 De octo, 413 and 388–89.
40 Lehmann, Paul, Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge Deutschlands und der Schweiz, vol. 1 : Die Bistümer Konstanz und Chur (Munich, 1918), 259.Google Scholar
41 This is a play on Propertius’s Elegy, 4.8, in which the poet’s mistress returns unexpectedly to his house and must drive away the other ‘tarts’ whom she finds there. See Barnish, S. J. B., ‘Maximian, Cassiodorus, Boethius, Theodahad: Poetry, Philosophy and Politics in Ostrogothic Italy’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 34 (1990), 16–32 Google Scholar, at 22. See also Crabbe, Anna, ‘Literary Design in the De Consolatane Philosophiae ’ in Gibson, Margaret, ed., Boethius: His Life, Thought and Influence (London, 1981), 237–74.Google Scholar
42 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Victor Watts (rev. edn, London, 1999), 3–5.
43 On the importance of this connection for medieval writers, see Carruthers, Mary, The Book of Memory: a Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 10 (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar, esp. 196 and 201. A discussion of the ancient context is found in James Ker, ‘Nocturnal Writers in Imperial Rome: the Culture of Lucubratio’, Classical Philology 99 (2004), 209–42.
44 ‘tu forsan eius conscia lectuli/complexa dulcis munia sauii/furare, noctis ausa silentia/nobis negata sumere gaudia. fors ille uitro corpore purior/putatus, ille turture castior/fideliorque perfidus a sua/tecum, o puella, conteret otia.’ Ibid., 50–7.
45 For another eleventh-century response to the Boethian text, likewise in favour of the Muse, see de Carlos, Helena, ‘Poetry and Parody: Boethius, Dreams, and Gestures in the Letters of Godfrey of Rheims’, Essays in Medieval Studies 18 (2001), 18–30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. De Carlos argues that by using imagery drawn from the world of medieval medicine, Godfrey portrays his Muse as assuming the role of Lady Philosophy, specifically as the healer of the ‘sick man’ who needs poetry rather than rational investigation in order to cure his soul.
46 ‘sum ter ternarum una sororum,/ quas fert dulcicanas fama camenas,/ natas esse louis celsitonantis,/ ex Iunone satas, psallere doctas’. De octo, 67–70.
47 ‘idolatrae fatui numina uulgi/ olim falsiquis grata poetis,/ nunc iam christicolae noscimur esse/ suadentesque uiam pergere rectam/ castos diligimus, sancta docemus,/ mentis cultores semper amantes’. Ibid., 71–6.
48 ‘tu modo, queso, precando pete/ pneuma sacrum fragili annuere,/ ne nimium male et lutee,/ quae reboare iubes temere/ perficiam’. Ibid., 448–52. On the Muse’s truthful speech, see 287–8 and 303–5.
49 Such technique found their origins amongst the early Desert Fathers. In the eleventh century, however, ‘the desert’ was associated most often with acts of extreme bodily asceticism. On the late ancient context, see O’Laughlin, M, ‘The Bible, the Demons and the Desert: Evaluating the Antirrheticus of Evagrius Ponticus’, Studia Monastica 34 (1999), 201–15 Google Scholar; and Leyser, Conrad, ‘ Lectio divina, oratio pura: Rhetoric and the Techniques of Asceticism in the Conferences of John Cassian’, in Barone, Giulia, Caffiero, Marina and Barcellona, Francesco Scorza, eds, Modelli di comportamento, modelli di santità: contrasti, intersezioni, complementatità (Rome, 1994), 79–105.Google Scholar
50 On the hermits, see Leyser, Henrietta, Hermits and the New Monasticism: a Study of Religious Communities in Western Europe 1000–1150 (New York, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jestice, Phyllis G., Wayward Monks and the Religious Revolution of the Eleventh Century, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 76 (Leiden, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 ‘et quia perplures heu mulieres,/ pro pudor, in tali crimine labi/ attractasque fero doemonis unco/ captiuas uitii fune teneri/ nouimus, ingemimus atque dolemus,/ non quimus paucis fidere uobis…’ De octo, 146–51.
52 ‘nouit saepeque legit/ mentem femineam mobile quoddam,/ anceps, fluctiuagum, flabile monstrum,/ suspectus metuit perque timescit’. Ibid., 104–7.
53 Ibid., 274–6, and 349–52.
54 For a discussion of similar rhetoric among ancient authors, see for example Reckford, Kenneth, ‘Pueri ludentes: Some Aspects of Play and Seriousness in Horace’s Epistles’, Transactions of the American Philological Society 132 (2002), 1–19 Google Scholar at 3.
55 See Carruthers, Book of Memory, and idem, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images 400–1200, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 34 (Cambridge, 1998).
56 Listed in the modern catalogue are seven books of Cassian’s Institutiones and also books 18–24 of the Conlationes. See A. Holder, Die Handschriften der Grossherzoglich Badischen Hof- und Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe 5: Die Reichenauer Handschriften, Bd. 1 : Die Pergamenthandschriften (Wiesebaden, 1970), and his discussion of Karlsruhe, Landesbibliothek, Bib. cod. Aug. 42.
57 Cassian, Conlationes, 14.12 (ed. Michael Petschenig, CSEL 13.2 [Vienna, 1886], 413–14).
58 Carruthers, Craft of Thought, 88–91 on Cassian and distraction, and esp. 11 on the concept of mental inventory.
59 Conrad Leyser, Asceticism and Authority from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2000), 33–61 on Cassian esp. 51–5 on the use of Scripture to occupy the mind.
60 Otloh, De doctrina spirituali, PL 146, 263–300, at 263–4.
61 De octo, 20–1. For a discussion of jests and the concept of ludicra in medieval literature, see Curtius, European Literature, 423–8.
62 ‘ludicra respue, seria prome,/… His et dulces, cara, sorores/ mulce ludens’. De octo, 388–9; 402–3.
63 ‘interdumque iocos químus honestos/ pangere, si petimur; turpe ueremur/ ludere, ni fidus poscat poscat amicus,/ hoc qui celare norit honeste,/ non ad lasciuum intima uerbum/ mentis subdendo, iudice Christo/ caelitus attente cuneta vidente’. Ibid., 77–83.
64 Ibid., 191.
65 Ibid., 58–62.
66 Berthold, Chroniken, 172–3.