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‘COLUMBANUS WORE A SINGLE COWL, NOT A DOUBLE ONE’: THE VITA DEICOLI AND THE LEGACY OF COLUMBANIAN MONASTICISM AT THE TURN OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2021
Abstract
This article analyses the Life of St. Deicolus of Lure, a monastery in the Alsace region of east France, written by the cleric Theodoric in the 970s or 980s. It argues that the text contains a notable amount of information on the existence, methodology, and limitations of an ill-understood aspect of monastic integration around the year 1000. Relying on an analysis of the narrative's second prologue as well as scattered comments elsewhere in the text, it reconstructs three phenomena. The first is attempts to (re-)establish a Luxeuil-centered imagined community of institutions with a shared Columbanian legacy through the creation and circulation of hagiographic narratives. A second is the co-creation across institutional boundaries of texts and manuscripts that were designed to facilitate these integration attempts. And the third phenomenon is the limits of this integration effort, which did not tempt those involved to propose the establishment of a distinct ‘neo-Columbanian’ observance. As such, the Life represents an attempt to reconcile the legacy of Columbanus and his real or alleged followers as celebrated at late tenth-century Luxeuil and Lure with a contemporary understanding of reformed Benedictine identity.
Keywords
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fordham University
Footnotes
This article was written in the context of the research project “The Quest for Otherness: Uncovering Narratives of Religious Distinction in the Long Tenth Century,” which is sponsored by the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO). I wish to thank Melissa Provijn and the anonymous first reviewer for their helpful remarks.
References
1 The early history of Lure abbey is discussed in Gérard Moyse, “Les origines du monachisme dans le diocèse de Besançon (Ve-Xe siècles),” Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes 131 (1974): 21–104 (1) and 369–485 (2); Bernard de Vrégille, René Locatelli, and Gérard Moyse, Gallia pontificia: Répertoire des documents concernant les relations entre la papauté et les églises et monastères en France avant 1198, Vol. 1: Diocèse de Besançon (Göttingen, 1998), 165–71; and Hans J. Hummer, Politics and Power in Early Medieval Europe: Alsace and the Frankish Realm, 600–1000 (Cambridge, 2005), 224 and 234–36.
2 For a reconstruction of Theoderic's life and literary work, see for now Hoffmann, Hartmut, “Theoderich von Fleury/Amorbach/Trier,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 71 (2015): 475–526Google Scholar. Jeroen De Gussem and I are currently working on a new reconstruction of Theoderic's biographical and literary trajectory through a combination of stylometric and contextual analysis of his work.
3 The longer and older version of the Vita Deicoli (BHL 2120) was published in AS Januarii 2 (Antwerp, 1643), 200–10 (henceforth Vita Deicoli), while an abridged one (BHL 2121) last appeared in an edition by Georg Waitz in MGH, Scriptores 15.2 (Hanover, 1888), 674–82. On this remarkable narrative, Zinzius, Heinrich, “Untersuchungen über Heiligenleben der Diözese Besançon,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 46 (1928): 380–95Google Scholar; Thomas, Heinz, “Der Mönch Theoderich von Trier und die Vita Deicoli,” Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 31 (1966–67): 42–63Google Scholar; idem, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung des 11. Jahrhunderts insbesondere zu den Gesta Treverorum (Bonn, 1968), 162; Heikkilä, Tuomas, Vita S. Symeonis Treverensis. Ein hochmittelalterlicher Heiligenkult im Kontext (Helsinki, 2002), 91–93Google Scholar; Hummer, Politics and Power, 224 and 234–36; Lotter, Friedrich and Gäbe, Sabine, “Die hagiographische Literatur im deutschen Sprachraum unter den Ottonen und Saliern (ca. 960–1130),” in Hagiographies: Histoire internationale de la littérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1550, ed. Philippart, G. (Turnhout, 2006), 4:286–89Google Scholar; and Hoffmann, “Theoderich,” 483–84.
4 Vanderputten, Steven, “Reconsidering Religious Migration and Its Impact: The Problem of ‘Irish Reform Monks’ in Tenth-Century Lotharingia,” Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 113 (2018): 588–618Google Scholar.
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6 Charles Mériaux, “Multorum coenobiorum fundator et innumerabilium pater monachorum: Le culte et le souvenir de saint Colomban et de ses disciples dans le Nord de la Gaule du haut Moyen Âge,” in L'eredità di san Colombano: Memoria e culto attraverso il medioevo/L'héritage de saint Colomban: Mémoire et culte au Moyen Âge/Saint Columbanus’ Legacy: Memory and Cult in the Middle Ages, ed. E. Destefanis (Rennes, 2017), 85–98.
7 Hummer, Politics and Power (n. 1 above), 234–36.
8 The episcopal centers are Paris, Tours, Poitiers, Limoges, Bourges, Orléans, Lyon, Reims, Soissons, Toul, Metz, Trier (which the author refers to as a “second Rome”), Strasbourg, and Vesoul; Vita Deicoli, 200–1. Theoderic included a similar list of prominent cultic centers (but omitted the references to Sankt Maximin and Luxeuil) in a later work of his, the Illatio Sancti Benedicti; Ernst Dümmler, “Über Leben und Schriften des Mönches Theoderich (von Amorbach),” Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin 2 (1894): 1–38, at 25–26.
9 In later centuries the geographical scope of Deicolus's cult was mostly limited to Alsace and parts of rural Switzerland; Schreiber, Georg, Irland im deutschen und abendländischen Sakralraum: Zugleich ein Ausblick auf St. Brandan und die zweite Kolumbusreise (Cologne, 1956), 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 In Zinzius's opinion, the description of Deicolus's life is “for the most part totally invented” (zum grossen Teile glatt erfunden) and on that basis he deems it worthless as a historical source; “Untersuchungen über Heiligenleben” (n. 3 above), 390. For a more benign assessment, refer to Moyse, “Les origines du monachisme” (1) (n. 1 above), 47–48.
11 Hummer, Politics and Power (n. 1 above), 224. The relevant passage from the Vita Germani was edited by Bruno Krusch in MGH, Scriptores rerum Merowingicarum 5 (Hanover and Leipzig, 1910), 33.
12 The Vita refers to a church dedicated to St Martin, which may indicate that Lure's origins as Christian site of worship went back to late antiquity or the early Middle Ages; Vita Deicoli, 203 and the commentary in Moyse, “Les origines du monachisme” (1) (n. 1 above), 94.
13 Initia consuetudinis Benedictinae: Consuetudines saeculi octavi et noni, ed. K. Hallinger, Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum 1 (Siegburg, 1963), 496.
14 Die Urkunden Lothars I. und Lothars II., ed. T. Schieffer, MGH, Die Urkunden der Karolinger (Berlin and Zürich, 1966), 448–51 (no. 38). The latest possible date for the forgery is 1179, when it was used to draft a privilege by Pope Alexander III; Jean Girardot, “L’étymologie de Lure et la charte de Lothaire,” Mémoires de la Société d'Emulation du Doubs (1934): 51–53; Die Urkunden, ed. Schieffer, 449; and Moyse, “Les origines du monachisme” (1) (n. 1 above), 30–31.
15 Vita Deicoli, 207.
16 Hummer, Politics and Power (n. 1 above), 224. See also the discussion of the Etichonid family in Frank Legl, “Die Herkunft von Papst Leo IX,” in Léon IX et son temps: Actes du colloque international organisé par l'Institut d'Histoire Médiévale de l'Université Marc-Bloch, Strasbourg-Eguisheim, 20–22 juin 2002, ed. G. Bischoff and B.-M. Tock (Turnhout, 2006), 61–76.
17 Presumably Alanesberg was a short-lived settlement of a group of eremitical practitioners. It is undocumented in other sources and has eluded precise geographical identification; Frank Legl, Studien zur Geschichte der Grafen von Dagsburg-Egisheim (Saarbrücken, 1998), 183.
18 Die Urkunden Konrad I., Heinrich I. und Otto I., ed. T. Sickel, MGH, Diplomata regum et imperatorum Germaniae 1 (Hanover, 1879), 279 (no. 199); and again in Chartes originales antérieures à 1121 conservées en France, ed. C. Giraud, J.-B. Renault, and B.-M. Tock (Nancy, 2010), no. 546, online at http://www.cn-telma.fr/originaux/charte546/ (accessed 7 October 2020).
19 The description of Lure as a “most suitable location” (locum aptissimum) to host a monastery seems to carry the implication that no earlier buildings that could serve that purpose had survived into the middle decades of the tenth century; Vita Deicoli, 201 and Moyse, “Les origines du monachisme” (1) (n. 1 above), 93.
20 Vita Deicoli, 210. Baltramn is named in two separate versions of Fulda's necrology, once as Baldara(m) confessor Christi and another time as Baldram solitarius; Annales necrologici Fuldenses, ed. G. Waitz, MGH, Scriptores 13 (Hanover, 1881), 199, with notes in Die Klostergemeinschaft von Fulda im früheren Mittelalter, ed. K. Schmid (Münster, 1978), 2.1:362. The absence in these sources of any reference to Baltramn's status as abbot of Alanesberg or Lure suggests that his posthumous reputation outside of Lure rested on his achievement as a practitioner of the eremitical life and on his personal charisma, rather than on his leadership of a community of hermits or a consolidated monastic institution.
21 The chronology of abbatial tenures at Lure eludes detailed reconstruction. Werdolph's year of death is unknown, as are the dates of the accession and death or resignation of his successors Milo (attested 1016), Durand (1031), and Gerard (1051); Gallia Christiana 15 (Paris, 1860), col. 166.
22 Hummer, Politics and Power (n. 1 above), 242–45; and (for the context) Legl, Studien zur Geschichte der Grafen, 183–86.
23 Die Urkunden Heinrichs II. und Arduins, ed. H. Bresslau, MGH, Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser 3 (Hanover, 1900–3), 452 (no. 353).
24 Moyse, “Les origines du monachisme” (1) (n. 1 above), 92–93 and (2), 480.
25 The hagiographer justifies Otto's intervention in Burgundian territory by implying that the sovereign had acted in a manner befitting of an emperor, even though he had still been only a king at the time (“Quapropter si in praesentia Principis Ottonis, locum redhibere voluerint, et pristinae libertati reddere, ab ipsa imperatoria manu recipiamus illum”); Vita Deicoli, 209. His argument about Otto's imperial status while he was still a king aligns with that of former Luxeuil oblate Adso of Montier-en-Der in his Libellus de Antichristo; Thomas, “Der Mönch Theoderich” (n. 3 above), 52.
26 Refer also to the commentary in Die Urkunden, ed. Schieffer (n. 14 above), 449.
27 Die Urkunden, ed. Bresslau, 451–52 (no. 353). All three of these earlier documents no longer exist; that by Louis the Pious is listed, without questions about its authenticity, as a deperditum in Die Urkunden Ludwigs des Frommen, ed. T. Kölzer et al., MGH, Die Urkunden der Karolinger (Wiesbaden, 2016), 2:1106–7.
28 Die Touler Vita Leos IX, ed. D. Jasper and V. Lukas, MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 70 (Hanover, 2007), 88 and 90.
29 Papsturkunden in Frankreich: Reiseberichte zur Gallia Pontificia, ed. W. Wiederhold (Vatican City, 1985), 1:21–22 (no. 3); discussed in Hummer, Politics and Power (n. 1 above), 70–71; Bernard de Vrégille, “Léon IX et le royaume de Bourgogne,” in Léon IX et son temps, ed. Bischoff and Tock (n. 16 above), 331–41, at 334; and Jörg Oberste, “Papst Leo IX. und das Reformmönchtum,” in Léon IX et son temps, 405–33, at 429–30. Leo's distant relatives kept acting as Lure abbey's lay advocates into the twelfth century; Legl, Studien zur Geschichte der Grafen (n. 17 above), 185–86.
30 The written record of that promise was printed in François Ignace Dunod de Charnage, Histoire de l’église de Besançon, ville et diocese (Besançon, 1750), 1:215.
31 Vita Deicoli, ed. Waitz (n. 3 above), 674–82.
32 London, BL, Add. 21917, fol. 51r–71v. On the dating, provenance, and contents of this manuscript, see Leopold V. Delisle, “Notice sur un manuscrit de l'abbaye de Luxeuil copié en 625,” Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Nationale et autres bibliothèques 31 (1886), 163; Hugh J. Lawlor, “The Manuscripts of the Vita S. Columbani,” The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy 32 (1902–4), 9–11; Leslie W. Jones, “Dom Victor Perrin and Three Manuscripts of Luxeuil,” The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (Manchester) 23 (1939): 166–81, at 174–78; Adso Dervensis opera hagiographica, ed. M. Goullet, CCM 198 (Turnhout, 2003), 65–67; and Hoffmann, “Theoderich” (n. 2 above), 483.
33 Vita Deicoli, 201: “Est nempe in territorio antetactae ciuitatis locus admodum spiritalis, situs in ipso margine Vosagi saltus, cui ob experimentum plurimarum virtutum aptissimum est inditum vocabulum; appellatur quippe spiritaliter lux ouium: et quare, non renuo paucis explicare.”
34 Vita Deicoli, 202: “ad construendum ouile Domini, in loco, qui Luxouium exin nomen ademit . . . omnimodis nisum dedit.” On the historicity of claims that Gallus was one of Columbanus's first disciples, Ernst Tremp, “Columbans Vermächtnis im Widerstreit: Die Rechtfertigungsrede des Gallus vor der Gesandtschaft aus Luxeuil im Jahr 629,” in Gallus und seine Zeit: Leben, Wirken, Nachleben, ed. F. Schnoor, K. Schmuki, E. Tremp, P. Erhart, and J. K. Hüeblin (Sankt Gallen, 2015), 243–66, at 256–66.
35 Goullet, Monique, “Vers une typologie des réécritures hagiographiques, à partir de quelques exemples du Nord-Est de la France: Avec une édition synoptique des deux Vies de saint Evre de Toul,” in La réécriture hagiographique dans l'Occident médiéval: Transformations formelles et idéologiques, ed. Goullet, M. and Heinzelmann, M. (Ostfildern, 2003), 109–44Google Scholar, at 123–24.
36 Moyse, “Les origines du monachisme” (1) (n. 1 above), 31.
37 de Vrégille, Locatelli, and Moyse, Gallia Pontificia (n. 1 above), 175. According to H. Boumont, in 948 a mere sixteen monks were living at the abbey; Etude historique sur l'abbaye de Luxeuil 590–1700 (Luxeuil-les-Bains, 1895), 8. Around the same time Luxeuil's oblate Adso was sent to Saint-Evre, where he became a schoolmaster under the auspices of Bishop Gozelin of Toul before transferring to the abbey of Montier-en-Der; Adso Dervensis Opera hagiographica, ed. Goullet, i–vii.
38 Recueil des chartes de l'abbaye de Cluny, ed. A. Bernard and A. Bruel (Paris, 1876), 1:605–6 (no. 650, dated to 943–64); and 2:725–26 (no. 1702, dated October 984).
39 Adso Dervensis Opera hagiographica, ed. Goullet, 79–100 and the commentary at vii–xxvi. A similar strategy underpinned the redaction of a collection of a roughly contemporary collection of miracles by Columbanus from the saint's other foundation of Bobbio; Alexander O'Hara and Taylor Faye, “Aristocratic and Monastic Conflict in Tenth-Century Italy: The Case of Bobbio and the Miracula Sancti Columbani,” Viator 44 (2013): 43–61.
40 London, BL, Add. 21914; Jones, “Dom Victor Perrin” (n. 32 above), 168–74 (who discusses a handful of other tenth- and eleventh-century manuscripts from Luxeuil at 166–68 and 174–81); and Jean Vezin, “Les manuscrits en Lotharingie autour de l'an mil,” in Religion et culture autour de l'an mil: Royaume de France et Lotharingie, ed. D. Iogna-Prat and J.-C. Picard (Paris, 1990), 314.
41 Boumont, Etude historique sur l'abbaye de Luxeuil, 8–9.
42 Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 87, fol. 17v (colophon). The manuscript further contains geometric and gromatic excerpts from Cassiodorus, Isidore, and the Agrimensores, as well as Easter tables for the years 1004–25; a description may be found online at http://katalog.burgerbib.ch/detail.aspx?ID=129185 (accessed 7 October 2020).
43 Giuseppe Vecchi, “Il ‘planctus’ di Gudino di Luxeuil: Un ambiente scolastico, un ritmo, una melodia,” Quadrivium 1 (1956): 19–40, at 25–27; and Mia Münster-Swendsen, “Medieval Virtuosity: Classroom Practice and the Transfer of Charismatic Power in Medieval Scholarly Culture, c. 1000–1230,” in Negotiating Heritage: Memories of the Middle Ages, ed. M. M. Bruun and S. Glaser (Turnhout, 2008), 43–64, at 53–54.
44 Vecchi, “Il ‘planctus’ di Gudino di Luxeuil,” 26.
45 Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 88; a description may be found at http://katalog.burgerbib.ch/detail.aspx?ID=129186 (accessed 7 October 2020).
46 Katherine Allen Smith, “Ungirded for Battle: Knightly Conversion to Monastic Life and the Making of Weapon-Relics in the Central Middle Ages,” in Between Sword and Prayer : Warfare and Medieval Clergy in Cultural Perspective, ed. R. Kotecki, J. Maciejewski, and J. Ott (Leiden, 2017), 182–206, at 195.
47 Adso Dervensis Opera hagiographica, ed. Goullet (n. 32 above), xlii.
48 On Fleury's status in these decades, see first and foremost Abbon, un abbé de l'an mil, ed. A. Dufour-Malbezin and G. Labory (Turnhout, 2008); and on Sankt Maximin, Michel Margue and Jean Schroeder, “Aspects du rayonnement intellectuel de Trèves dans la deuxième moitié du Xe siècle,” in Echanges religieux et intellectuels du Xe au XIIIe siècle en Haute et en Basse-Lotharingie: Actes des 5es Journées Lotharingiennes 21 et 22 octobre 1988, Centre Luxembourgeois de Documentation et d’Études Médiévales (Luxembourg, 1991), 71–131; and Anne Wagner, Gorze au XIe siècle: Contribution à l'histoire du monachisme bénédictin dans l'Empire (Turnhout, 1995), 30–31.
49 Homonyms of Lure's abbots Milo (who is mentioned in 1016) and Gerard (in 1049) are on record as abbot of Luxeuil (respectively in 1018 and 1051); de Vrégille, Locatelli, and Moyse, Gallia Pontificia (n. 1 above), 166.
50 Abbot Milo is listed as the recipient in a 1016 privilege for Lure by King Henry II (Die Urkunden Heinrichs II. und Arduins, ed. H. Bresslau, MGH, Die Urkunden der deutschen Könige und Kaiser 3 [Hanover, 1900–3], 451–52 [no. 353]) and in another from 1018 for Luxeuil by Pope Benedict VIII (de Vrégille, Locatelli, and Moyse, Gallia Pontificia [n. 1 above], 180–81). Gerard obtained a privilege for Luxeuil from Pope Leo IX in 1049 and another for Lure in 1051 from the same prelate; Papsturkunden in Frankreich: Reiseberichte zur Gallia Pontificia, ed. W. Wiederhold (Vatican City, 1985), 1:20 (no. 2) and 21–22 (no. 3). Gerard's combined tenure at Lure and Luxeuil is further substantiated by evidence pertaining to his interactions with Abbess Oda of Remiremont and Pope Leo IX; see Steven Vanderputten, “Against the Custom: Hagiographical Rewriting and Female Abbatial Leadership at Mid-Eleventh-Century Remiremont,” Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 10 (2021), in press.
51 Hoffmann, “Theoderich” (n. 2 above).
52 Even though the oldest explicit reference linking the manuscript to Luxeuil is a fifteenth-century owner's note, according to Jean Vezin the eleventh-century script strongly resembles that which is found in another manuscript that Abbot Gerard of Luxeuil donated to the local church of Saint-Peter. See n. 68, below.
53 Around the turn of the millennium Fécamp was granted authority over the abbey of Saint-Taurin of Evreux, where an earlier version of the Life of St. Taurin had been written in the tenth century. Early in the eleventh century the monks of Fécamp obtained a copy of that text, revised it, and apparently sent out copies of that new version; see Felice Lifshitz, “La Normandie carolingienne: Essai sur la continuité, avec utilisation de sources négligées,” Annales de la Normandie 48 (1998): 505–24, at 518.
54 No fewer than twenty-nine tenth- and eleventh-century copies of Jonas's Vita Columbani are known, according to Alexander O'Hara, Jonas of Bobbio and the Legacy of Columbanus (Oxford, 2018), 267–68.
55 Dominique Iogna-Prat, “La geste des origines dans l'historiographie clunisienne des XIe-XIIe siècles,” Revue bénédictine 102 (1992): 135–91; and Franz Neiske, “Charismatischer Abt oder charismatische Gemeinschaft? Die frühen Äbte Clunys,” in Charisma und religiöse Gemeinschaften im Mittelalter, ed. G Andenna, M. Breitenstein, and G. Melville (Münster, 2005), 55–72.
56 Steven Vanderputten, “‘I Would be Rather Pleased if the World Were to be Rid of Monks’: Resistance to Cluniac Integration in Late Eleventh- and Early Twelfth-Century France,” Journal of Medieval History 47 (2021): 22–41.
57 Ernst Tremp, “Saint Colomban dans les manuscrits hagiographiques et liturgiques de l'abbaye de Saint-Gall,” in L'eredità di san Colombano (n. 6 above), 217–28.
58 Brussels, Royal Library Albert 1, 8518–8520.
59 Steven Vanderputten, Monastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900–1100 (Ithaca, NY, 2013), 54–55.
60 Mériaux, “Multorum coenobiorum fundator” (n. 6 above), 88.
61 Adso Dervensis Opera hagiographica, ed. Goullet (n. 32 above), 88–89. The Luxeuil monks may have mistaken the Count Walbert who is mentioned in Saint-Bertin's hagiographies for their third abbot Waldebert; Mériaux, “Multorum coenobiorum fundator” (n. 6 above), 89.
62 Bishop Weginhar of Strasbourg (d. 1028) donated the Luxeuil copy of the Geometria (see n. 42, above) and a Saint-Bertin copy of the Arathea (a translation of a Greek treatise on the ancient constellations) to the cathedral of Strasbourg (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 88, described online at https://aratea-digital.acdh.oeaw.ac.at/pages/show.html?document=desc__bern_bb_88.xml&directory=descriptions [accessed 7 October 2020]). While scholars always assumed that Weginhar had acquired the latter manuscript from Saint-Bertin, it is just as likely that the codex had first ended up at Luxeuil as part of a trade between monastic centers before they were transferred into the bishop's hands.
63 Mériaux, “Multorum coenobiorum fundator” (n. 6 above), 88.
64 The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 7 H 50; “Catalogus codicum hagiographicorum bibliothecae regiae Hagensis,” Analecta Bollandiana 6 (1887): 161–208, at 204–6; and Adso Dervensis Opera hagiographica, ed. Goullet (n. 32 above), 67–68.
65 Mériaux, “Multorum coenobiorum fundator” (n. 6 above), 89.
66 Adso Dervensis Opera hagiographica, ed. Goullet (n. 32 above); and Les moines du Der 673–1790: Actes du Colloque International d'Histoire Joinville-Montier-en-Der, 1er–3 octobre 1998, ed. P. Corbet (Langres, 2000).
67 In Jean Vezin's opinion the manuscript was either copied by Metz scribes who worked locally or were sent to work at Luxeuil, or by Luxeuil monks who had been trained in the Metz style. Besides these palaeographical clues about a connection to Metz, the French scholar also indicated a note on fol. 71v, where a scribe named Stephanus identifies himself in a cipher message that is very similar to one we find in a manuscript by Constantin of Saint-Symphorien in Metz (now Paris, BNF, Lat. 5294); Vezin, “Manuscrits” (n. 40 above), 314–15. On ciphers, see Katherine Ellison and Susan Kim, “Introduction: Ciphers and the Material History of Literacy,” in A Material History of Medieval and Early Modern Ciphers: Cryptography and the History of Literacy, ed. eadem (New York, 2018), 1–29.
68 Paris, BNF, Nouvelle acquisition latine 2196; and Vezin, “Manuscrits” (n. 40 above), 314.
69 Das Verbrüderungsbuch der Abtei Reichenau, ed. J. Autenrieth, D. Geuenich, and K. Schmid, MGH, Libri memoriales et necrologia, n.s. 1 (Hanover, 1979), 1–164.
70 Josef Semmler, “Das Erbe der karolingischen Klosterreform im 10. Jahrhundert,” in Monastische Reformen im 9. und 10. Jahrhundert, ed. R. Kottje and H. Maurer (Sigmaringen, 1989), 29–77.
71 Vita Deicoli, 200–1: “Ibi quippe gymnasium inuenitur spiritale monachorum, atque inexpugnabile semper patens azylum miseris, atque post multa facinora mundo et concupiscentiis eius obrenuntiantibus, iugiter in palaestra paternae disciplinae sese ibidem exercitantes, et propter timores nocturnos semper armati incedentes, diabolicas acies viriliter cuneati infringunt: nec tamen, ut vulgo solet, post victoriam dimicare desistunt, verum dum hodie est, incessanter pugnant, incessanter triumphant.”
72 Margue and Schroeder, “Aspects du rayonnement intellectuel” (n. 48 above). See also Daniel Misonne and Michel Margue, “Aspects politiques de la réforme monastique en Lotharingie: Le cas des abbayes de Saint-Maximin de Trèves, de Stavelot-Malmédy et d'Echternach (934–973),” Revue bénédictine 98 (1988): 31–61; and John Nightingale, Monasteries and Patrons in the Gorze Reform: Lotharingia c. 850–1000 (Oxford, 2007), 169–260.
73 Vita Deicoli, 201. The Life of John of Gorze, composed in the 970s–980s, mentions a monk from Fulda named Gundlach who, prior to coming to Gorze, had spent time at Sankt Maximin “because of its famous religious observance” (ob insignem religionis conversationem); John of Saint-Arnoul, Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. P. C. Jacobsen, Die Geschichte vom Leben des Johannes von Gorze (Wiesbaden, 2016), 308. Sankt Maximin's reputation reached as far south as Alsace, as is shown by the comments in the Vita Deicoli and possibly also in the dissemination of hagiographic material relating to its patron St. Maximin. In 1857, a ninth-century manuscript with tenth-century additions by scribes from Sankt Maximin (including a Life of St Maximin) was sold as part of an auction with multiple lots from the former library of Luxeuil; Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz Ms. theol. lat. oct. 155, online at http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/?xdbdtdn!%22obj%2031101612%22&dmode=doc#|4 (accessed 7 October 2020).
74 Hoffmann, “Theoderich” (n. 2 above).
75 In Fleury's customary (which likely dates from the 1010s) Theoderic would once again praise that abbey as an exemplar of monastic observance; Consuetudines Floriacenses antiquiores, ed. A. Davril and L. Donnat, L'abbaye de Fleury en l'an Mil (Paris, 2004), 172: “Generosus Floriacensis monasterii locus pro genere habeatur et cetera monasteria quasi eius species complectentur, ut eo facilius in capite membrorum valitudo pervestigetur.”
76 Semmler, “Das Erbe der karolingischen Klosterreform” (n. 70 above), 29–31; and Giles Constable, “Baume and Cluny in the Twelfth Century,” in idem, The Abbey of Cluny: A Collection of Essays to Mark the Eleven-Hundreth Anniversary of Its Foundation (Berlin, 2010), 405–35, at 405–7.
77 de Vrégille, Locatelli, and Moyse, Gallia Pontificia (n. 1 above), 175.
78 Steven Vanderputten, “The Emergence of the Ecclesia Cluniacensis,” in A Companion to the Abbey of Cluny in the Middle Ages, ed. S. G. Bruce and S. Vanderputten (Leiden, 2021), 34–49.
79 Vita Deicoli, 202: “Et ad augendum gregem Domini plus cupidus, quam suae solius saluationi consulere contentus, veluti non eneruis miles Christi, ad construendum ouile Domini, in loco, qui Luxouium exin nomen ademit, succinctus cuculla, non cucullo, omnimodis nisum dedit.”
80 Kassius Hallinger, Gorze-Kluny: Studien zu den monastischen Lebensformen und Gegensätzen im Hochmittelalter (Rome, 1950–51), 2:702–15.
81 Semmler, “Das Erbe der karolingischen Klosterreform” (n. 70 above), esp. 61–63; and Steven Vanderputten, “The Dignity of Our Bodies and the Salvation of Our Souls: Scandal, Purity, and the Pursuit of Unity in Late Tenth-Century Monasticism,” in Using and Not Using the Past after the Carolingian Empire, c. 900–c. 1050, ed. A. Hicklin, S. Greer, and S. Esders (Abingdon, 2019), 262–81.
82 Hallinger, Gorze-Kluny; and E. Hochholzer, “Die Lothringische (‘Gorzer’) Reform,” in Die Reformverbände und Kongregationen der Benediktiner im Deutschen Sprachraum, ed. U. Faust and F. Quarthal (St. Ottilien, 1999), 43–87.
83 See esp. Wagner, Gorze au XIe siècle (n. 48 above).
84 Vita Deicoli, 204, to be compared with the passage in Vita beati Cadroe abbatis Valciodorensis, in Acta Sanctorum veteris et maioris Scotiae seu Hiberniae sanctorum Insulae, ed. J. Colgan (Louvain, 1645), 1:499.
85 Wagner, Gorze au XIe siècle (n. 48 above), 487. On sunbeam miracles in early medieval hagiography, see among other studies Phillips Barry, “The Bridge of Sunbeams,” The Journal of American Folklore 27 (1914): 79–89.
86 Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 272–74; and also Guilia Barone, “Gorze et Cluny a Roma,” in Retour aux sources: Textes, études et documents d'histoire médiévale offerts à Michel Parisse, ed. Sylvain Gouguenheim (Paris, 2004), 583–90.
87 In 891 King Arnulf of Lotharingia apparently gave Luxeuil abbey to the diocese of Metz. See Moyse, “Les origines du monachisme” (2) (n. 1 above), 439.
88 Semmler, “Das Erbe der karolingischen Klosterreform” (n. 70 above).
89 Nightingale, Monasteries and Patrons (n. 72 above), 71–72 and 77–86.
90 Vita Deicoli, 209.
91 At one point the monks of Gorze, who were embroiled in a conflict with Bishop Adalbero of Metz, had threatened to leave for Sankt Maximin; Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 374; and Miracula s. Gorgonii, ed. P. C. Jacobsen, Studien und Texte zur Gorgonius-Verehrung im 10. Jahrhundert (Hanover, 2009), 116.
92 Beginning in ca. 1003 and 1006 respectively, Immo combined the abbacy of Gorze with those of Prüm and Reichenau; Wagner, Gorze au XIe siècle (n. 48 above), 37–52.
93 Authors from the period had different ways of conveying that message. For instance, the Italian Life of the Hermit Simeon, composed in the 1030s, includes the story of Simeon who has a vision of a conversation with St. Columbanus. Throughout the passage St. Benedict literally stands between the two men, which Simeon explains by saying that Benedict's precepts take precedence over those by Columbanus; Paolo Golinelli, “La «Vita» di s. Simeone monaco,” Studi medievali 20 (1979): 745–88, at 782–83.
94 Vita Deicoli, 201. Theoderic used the same rare expression in his Illatio Sancti Benedicti, ed. Dümmler (n. 8 above), 24 and 26.
95 Vita Deicoli, 207.
96 Vita Deicoli, 206: “sacer locus diatim saecularibus esset occupatus sordibus.”
97 Vita Deicoli, 204.
98 Vita Deicoli, respectively 208: “. . . quia monachi feminarum consortia declinare solent, quod perfectus pater in vita sua custodire studuit, hoc et post mortem violare noluit.”
99 Vita Deicoli, 200 and 210.
100 Vita Deicoli, 205 (“paradisus monachorum . . . divini schola servitii”) and 206.
101 Vita Deicoli, 205–6: “. . . ad secretiorem atque actiorem vitam anhelans.”
102 Vita Deicoli, 203: “peregrinus sum et monachicum proposito gero.” The descriptor peregrinus (“ascetic wanderer”) is also used in a second passage on 203–4.
103 Vita Deicoli, 209.
104 Vita Deicoli, 207: “. . . sacramento iusiurandi super tanti Patris sepulchrum se unanimiter tricauerunt, quatenus eorum nullus se subtraheret, quin in proximo, saeculo funditus abrenuntiaret, ac beatissimi Patris Benedicti regulae, tonsura, habitu, professione, obedientialiter se subderet, et eiusdem loci stabilitatem fine tenus custodiret.”
105 Marie-Christine Chartier, “La regula solitariorum de Grimlaïc: Edition et commentaire,” 2 vols. (Ph.D. diss., Université de Paris X-Nanterre, 1980); Karl S. Frank, “Grimlaicus, ‘Regula solitariorum’,” in Vita Religiosa im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Kaspar Elm zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. S. Haarländer, F. J. Felten, and N. Jaspert (Berlin, 1999), 21–36; and Andrew Thornton, “Rule Within Rule, Cell Within Cloister: Grimlaicus's Regula Solitariorum,” in Medieval Anchorites in their Communities, ed. C. Gunn and L. H. McAvoy (Woodbridge, 2017), 68–83. Although the text might date back as far as the second quarter of the ninth century, the oldest known copy was made at late tenth-century Sankt Maximin: Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Theol. lat. fol. 726.
106 Vita sancti Arnulphi, in AS Julii 4 (Antwerp, 1725), 444: “monachi habitum in eremo suscepit.”
107 Vita Basoli, ed. M. Goullet, in Adso Dervensis Opera hagiographica (n. 32 above), 257–69.
108 Julia Barone, “Jean de Gorze: Moine de la réforme et saint original,” in Religion et culture autour de l'an mil (n. 40 above), 31–38; eadem, “Jean de Gorze, moine bénédictin,” in L'abbaye de Gorze au Xe siècle, ed. M. Parisse and O. G. Oexle (Nancy, 1993), 141–58; and Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 1–105.
109 Refer to the discussions in Semmler, “Das Erbe der karolingischen Klosterreform” (n. 70 above); and Wagner, Gorze au XIe siècle (n. 48 above), esp. 28.
110 Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 234 (on pollution of sacred space), 190 (on the hermit Berner who refuses to sit where he had earlier seen a woman take a place), and 398 (where John expresses no fear of castration and states that this would liberate him from great worry). Legitimate interactions with (mostly veiled) women are discussed in Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 185–86 and 192–96.
111 Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 234, 238, 292, 326–28, 378, and 456.
112 Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 202–8, 224–26, and 253–54. Of particular note is a passage about a hermit who declined to follow any kind of rule and as a result of this led a dissolute lifestyle; Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 204–6. According to his biographer Ruotger, Archbishop Bruno of Cologne (d. 965) imposed regulations and supervision by religious communities on all the hermits in his archdiocese; Vita Brunonis archiepiscopi Coloniensis, ed. I. Ott, MGH, Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, n.s. 10 (Weimar, 1951), 34. See also the reference cited above, n. 106.
113 Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 290–92.
114 Vita Johannis Gorziensis, ed. Jacobsen (n. 73 above), 218–20, 228–32, 248, 252, and 256–58. On this point, Otto G. Oexle, “Individuen und Gruppen in der lothringischen Gesellschaft des 10. Jahrhunderts,” in L'abbaye de Gorze, 105–39.
115 An interesting point of comparison is offered by Theoderic's Commentary on the Catholic Letters, which he wrote some time in or shortly after 1018 at the request of Abbot Richard of Amorbach. In that text, he provides a long and detailed argument on monastic spirituality and offers a trenchant critique of (among other things) simoniac clerics. Unfortunately the few published extracts are insufficient to extend our understanding of the author's views and to establish precisely how these had changed since he had left Lure in the 980s; Dümmler, “Über Leben und Schriften des Mönches Theoderich” (n. 8 above), 28–38. Tina Orth-Müller is currently preparing the first edition of the complete text for the CCM series. For some preliminary remarks on that project and on the commentary itself, see eadem, “Si ad plenum apostolica verba nequaquam valeam explanare: Theoderich von Fleury (Theoderich von Amorbach) und sein Kommentar zu den Katholischen Briefen,” in Medialatinitas: Ausgewählte Beiträge zum 8. Internationalen Mittellateinerkongress, Wien 17.–21.9.2017, ed. C. Ratkowitsch (Vienna, 2020), 75–90.