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The Deposit of Monastic Faith: The Carolingians on the Essence of Monasticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
We live in an age wary of admitting that any institution has an essence, and this has posed a dilemma for the study of monasticism. Until relatively recently, historians of monasticism zealously sought out its timeless and immutable inner qualities rather than its many varieties. While acknowledging the changes in external form and circumstances, Adolf von Harnack’s Monasticism: Its Ideals and History (1881), Dom Morin’s L’Idéal monastique (1912), James Hannay’s The Spirit and Origin of Christian Monasticism (1903) and Herbert Workman’s The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal (1913) nevertheless pursued the stable qualities of monasticism which had survived the tides of time. Even in 1957 Jean Leclercq could still presume that monasticism had an ‘essence’, in a classic work translated into English under the title The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture. To our twenty-first-century ears, such a monolith of a title, suggestive of the existence of a metahistorical ‘monastic ideal’, seems out of date. This essay approaches the subject of monastic historiography via an examination of Carolingian reflection on the monastic past, arguing that the significance of the ninth-century monastic programme lies in its effort to distil the entire received monastic heritage into a coherent and precise statement about the fundamental purpose of the monastic life. So we ask the question: when Eigil described Boniface and Sturm as spending a day away in a ‘sweet discussion about the life and manners of monks’, what exactly did he think they were talking about?
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- Part I: The Churches’ Use of the Past
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2013
References
1 ‘suave colloquium inter se de vita et conversatione monachorum diutissime habuerunt’: Eigil, Vita Sturmi 10 (MGH SS 2, 370).
2 Sullivan, R., ‘What was Carolingian Monasticism? The Plan of Saint Gall and the History of Monasticism’, in After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart, ed. Murray, A. (Toronto, ON, 1998), 251–87.Google Scholar
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5 ‘ut sus ad coenum canisque ad vomitum in calle salutis positum retraebant pedem’: Ardo, Vita Benedicti abbatis Anianensis 3 (MGH SS 15/1, 200–20).
6 The Codex is transmitted in the manuscript Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 28118 (c.800), and edited as Codex regulamm monastkarum et canonkatum in PL 103, cols 393–702. In its complete form, the Concordia is transmitted in Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 233 (203), and Vendôme, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 60, of the ninth and eleventh centuries respectively. The authoritative edition is that of P. Bonnerue, Benedicti Anianensis Concordia Regularum (CChr.CM 168, 168a).
7 Accordingly, many studies are concerned with tracing the progress of early medieval monasticism into Benedictinism: see Sullivan, R. E., ‘The Carolingian Age: Reflections on its Place in the History of the Middle Ages’, Speculum 64 (1989), 267–306 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 277.
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12 Benedict of Aniane, Concordia Regularum, prose preface (CChr.CM 168a, 4); verse preface (ibid. 6). Smaragdus, abbot of St Mihiel present at the Aachen synods, also described his Diadema Monachorum in the same manner: PL 102, col. 593.
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18 Rule of Benedict 58.17.
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20 D. Herwegen unequivocally credits Benedict of Aniane with the reinsertion of the conversatio morum, pointing to ch. 28 of the Collectio capitularis: ‘Ut novitio non facilis monasterii tribuatur ingressus …; expleto probationis suae anno secundum quod regula precipit inde faciat’: CCM 1, 523. See Herwegen, D., Studien zur benediktinischen Professformel (Münster, 1912), 57–67 Google Scholar; de Jong, In Samuel’s Image, 104–5.
21 Smaragdus, Expositio in Regulam S. Benedicti 58 (CCM 8, 295).
22 Witnessed by St Gallen Codex 914 (see n. 23 below), in agreement with the oldest known manuscript of the Rule of Benedict, Oxford, Bodl., MS Hatton 48.
23 Manuscripts of Benedicts Concordia Regularum are inconsistent: several contain conversatio, others contain conversio: Concordia 65.1 (CChr.CM 168A, 550). The profession formula in St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 914, reads conversio rather than conversatio (CCM 3, 177). The preference for conversio is also seen in the profession book of St Gall: Das Professbuch der Abtei Sankt Gallen, ed. P. Krieg (Augsburg, 1931), 16–19. See also Herwegen, ‘Geschicthte der benediktinischen Professformel’, 57–60.
24 ‘Sciendum est enim, quia aliud est conversatio et aliud est conversio. Conversatio enim attinet ad vitam et ad habitationem, conversio vero est de saeculo ad Deum, sicut in hoc loco dicitur. Quidam namque libri habent conversionem, quidam vero conversationem, sed sicut mihi videtur, melius habent illi, qui dicunt conversionem, quam illi, qui conversationem, eo quod conversatio attinet ad habitationem et ad vitam sive bonam sive malam, conversio autem ad mutationem sive de malo in bonum, sive de bono in malum’: Hildemar, , Expositio Regulae Sancti Benedicti 58, in Vita et regula SS. P. Benedicti una cum expositione regulae a Hildemaro tradita, ed. Mittermüller, R. (Regensburg, 1880), 532–3.Google Scholar
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26 ‘unus virtutibus actus crescit in melius, alter tepidus factus decrescit in peius; unus pollet virtutibus sacris, alter tepescit saeculi curis; unus veraciter nomen monachi portat, alius falsatoris monachi nomen gestat pariter et tonsuram’: Smaragdus, Expositio 1.6 (CCM 8, 59); ET from Barry, D., Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel: Commentary on the Rule of Saint Benedict, Cistercian Studies 12 (Kalamazoo, MI, 2007), 120.Google Scholar
27 Smaragdus, Expositio, Prologue 17, on the Rule of Benedict: ‘Si vis habere veram et perpetuam vitam’ (CCM 8, 30), citing Isidore Etymologiae 11.1.3: ‘Vita dicta propter vigorem, vel quod vim teneat nascendi atque crescendi’ (ET from Barry, Commentary, 82). On the theme of growth in Smaragdus, see also Expositio, Prologue 8, 49 (CCM 8, 24, 49).
28 Narberhaus, J., Benedikt von Aniane, Werk und Persönlichkeit (Münster, 1930), 60 Google Scholar: ‘trifft den Kernpunkt der Reform’. This conclusion is in contrast with a strain of contemporary scholarship which views the medieval monastery as an impermeable locus of sanctity filled with monks and nuns deemed by society to be holy, a septa secretiora where holiness was more to be managed than pursued. See Diem, Das monastische Experiment.
29 For the problem of the vow of conversio morum for those who had never known the secular life, see de Jong, In Samuel’s Image, 131.
30 Benedict of Aniane, Concordia Regularum 66.2, ‘Ex Regula sancti Basilii’ (CChr. CM 168a, 3): ‘Si vero cum aetatis augmento nullus in eis depraehenditur profectus industriae, sed vaga mens et animus cassus ac tumens etiam post instituta probabilia infructuousus permanserit, huiuscemodi abici oportet’.
31 Benedict of Aniane, Excerptus diversarum modus paenitentiarum (PL 103, cols 1417–20).
32 De modis amiciciamm et vera amicicia, ed J. Leclercq, in ‘Les Munimenta fidei de saint Benoit d’Aniane’, in Studia anselmiana philosophia theologica, 20: Analecta monastica 1 (Vatican City, 1952), 21–74, at 62, referring to Prov. 4: 18: ‘Iustorum semita quasi lux splendens procedit et crescit usque ad perfectam diem’.
33 Smaragdus, Expositio, metrical preface (CCM 8, 3–5; ET from Barry, Commentary 43–5).
34 ‘De hoc quod non omnis iustitiae observatio in hac sit regula constituta’: Rule of Benedict 73, referring to Matt. 3: 16.
35 Penco, G., ‘Ricerche sul capitolo finale della Regola di S. Benedetto’, Benedictina 8 (1954), 25–42 Google Scholar; Manning, E., ‘Le chapitre 73 de la Règle bénédictine est-il de S. Benoît?’, Archivium Latinitatis Medii Aevi 30 (1960), 129–41.Google Scholar
36 El Escorial, Real Biblioteca de San Lorenzo, MS a 1.13, part I, fol. 3.
37 Rule of Benedict 73.1-2.
38 Smaragdus, Expositio 63 (CCM 8, 336).
39 For analysis and edition, see Diem, A. and Müller, H., eds, ‘ Vita, Regula, Sermo: Eine unbekannte lateinische Vita Pacomii als Lehrtext für ungebildete Mönche und als Traktat über das Sprechen’, in Corradini, R., Diesenberger, M. and Niederkorn-Bruck, M., eds, Zwischen Niederschrift und Wiederschrift: Frühmittelalterliche Hagiographie und Historiographie im Spannungsfeld von Kompendienüberlieferung und Editionstechnik (Vienna, 2010), 223–72.Google Scholar
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41 Vita Pachomii 35, 62–8 (Diem and Müller, eds, ‘Vita, Regula, Sermo’, 262–4). Pachomius describes his conversion in terms of anima renovata.
42 Fructuosus of Braga, Regula Monastica Communis (PL 87, cols 1109–27); appended to the terminal chapter of the Regula is the Pactum Fructuosi (ibid., col. 1127). By comparison, see the chapter on ‘obedience’ in Rule of Benedict 5. See also Bishko, C. J., ‘The Pactual Tradition in Hispanic Monasticism’, in idem, Spanish and Portuguese Monastic History (London, 1984), 1.Google Scholar
43 Pactum Fructuosi (PL 87, cols 1128, 1130; ET in Iberian Fathers, transl. C.W. Barlow, 2 vols, Fathers of the Church 62, 63 [Washington, DC, 1969], 2: 208–9).
44 Delatte, P., The Rule of St. Benedict: A Commentary, transl. McCann, J. (New York, 1921 Google Scholar; first publ. as Commentaire sur la Règle de saint Benoît, Paris, 1913), 491.
45 Karoli epistole de litteris colendis 29 (MGH Capitularia regum Francorum I [Hanover, 1883], 79).
46 ‘ut, quicunque vos propter … sanctae conversationis nobilitatem ad videndum expetierit, sicut de aspectu vestro aedificatur visus, ita quoque de sapientia vestra’: ibid.
47 I am grateful to Luke Gardiner, who, in a response to the presentation of this communication at the Ecclesiastical History Society’s Summer Meeting, suggested the similar function of grammar in the formation of an essential Christian or monastic identity. It is not surprising that we find the same Smaragdus who wrote a commentary on the Rule of Benedict also writing a commentary on Donatus’s Grammar Smaragdus, Liber in partibus Donati (CChr.CM 68).
48 A. de Vogüé has argued that in producing the Concordia, Benedict of Aniane’s purpose was to combat a certain ‘paresse’ (laziness), indifference, and negligence of his contemporaries toward the monastic tradition apart from the Rule of Benedict: La Concordia regularum de Benoît d’Aniane: son vrai but et sa structure’, in Il monachesimo italiano dall’età longobardo all’età ottonianna (secc. VIII-X): Atti del VII Convegno di Studi Storici sull’Italia Benedettina, Nonantola (Moderna), 10–13 settembre 2003, ed. G. Spinelli (Cesena, 2006), 39–45, especially 40–1.
49 ‘Iam quidquid docuere Patres concorditer, atque | Verius us fatear, eadem simul unus et ipsa | Verba, licet dispar sensus non scinditur unus, | Una fides cunctos docuit et spiritus unus, | Una tenet patria, trames qua duxit et unus, | Dicimus ergo libri nomen Concordia rite. … | Haec est vera via, porgit haec pocula v tae, | Pabula dulciflua melle quae dulcius extant, | Haec tribuit codex, tribuit sine fine beate | Vivere cum Christo dignasque promere grates’: Benedict of Aniane, Concordia Regularum, metrical preface (CChr.CM 168a, 6–7).