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Monastic Miracles in Southern Italy, c.1040–1140

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

G. A. Loud
G. A. Loud*
Affiliation:
University of Leeds
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Extract

Almighty God sometimes shows his miracles not only in great things but also in minor matters, so that the faith of believers shall be more and more increased and thus it causes all creatures to break out in praise of their Creator, since he is seen to have a care with fatherly piety in all those things that are granted to human endeavour.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 41: Signs, Wonders, Miracles Representations of Divine Power in the Life of the Church , 2005 , pp. 109 - 122
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2005

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References

1 Desiderius, Dialogi de miraculis Sancti Benedicti, ed. G. Schwarz and A. Hofmeister, MGH.SS 30.2 (Hannover, 1934), lib. II, ch. 21, 1138.

2 Ward, , Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 171–80, esp. 174: ‘a preference for virtue rather than miracles’.Google Scholar

3 Vitae quatuor priorum abbatum Cavensium, ed. Mattei-Cerasoli, Leone, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 6.5 (Bologna, 1941) [hereafter: VQPA], 6 Google Scholar. The probable author of this text was Peter II, abbot of Venosa 1141–56; see Houben, Hubert, ‘L’autore delle “Vitae quatuor priorum abbatum Cavensium”’, Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 26 (1985), 871–9, repr. in idem, Medioevo monastico meridionale (Naples, 1987), 167–75.Google Scholar

4 ActaSS, 7 June, 110–11.

5 Houben, Hubert, Die Abtei Venosa und das Mönchtum im normannisch-staufischen Süditalien (Tübingen, 1995), 70–1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the composite nature of the biography, Mongelli, G., ‘Legenda de vita et obitu S. Guilielmi confessoris et heremite’, Samnium 23 (1960), 144–76 and 24(1961), 70–119, esp. 81–112.Google Scholar

6 BAV, Vat. lat. 1202; Newton, Francis, The Scriptorium and Library at Montecassino (Cambridge, 1999), 65–7, 291–307, esp. 292.Google Scholar

7 Newton, Scriptorium and Library, 67. This Gregory manuscript is now BAV, Vat. lat. 5735. The Dialogi de miraculis dates from 1076–9, although it has recently been suggested that the work may have been begun at least a decade earlier, W. D. McCready, ‘Dating the Dialogues of Abbot Desiderius of Montecassino’, Revue Bénédictine 108 (1998), 145–68.

8 Dialogi de miraculis, 1.1, 1118; cf. Gregorii Magni Dialogi, ed. Umberto Moricca, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 57 (Rome, 1924), II.7, 90.

9 VQPA, 22; ActaSS, 5 June, 44.

10 Panarelli, Francesco, Dal Gargano alla Toscana: il monachesimo riformato latino dei Pulsanesi (secoli XII-XIV) (Rome, 1997), 27, 283–5.Google Scholar

11 Dialogi de miraculis, II. 13, 1133; cf. Gregorii Magni Dialogi, II.6, 89.

12 Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, ed. H. Hoffmann, MGH.SS 34 (Hannover, 1980) [hereafter: Chron. Cas.,], lib. II.60, 284–5.

13 Orlandi, G., ‘ Vita Sancti Mennatis. Opera inedita di Leone Marsicano’, Rendiconti dell’Istituto Lombardo, Accademia di scienze e lettere 97 (1963), 467–90 Google Scholar [text 479–90], based on Gregorii Magni Dialogi, III. 26, 195–7. For the significance of this work, see Cowdrey, H.E.J., The Age of Abbot Desiderius: Montecassino, the Papacy and the Normans in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries (Oxford, 1983), 39–40.Google Scholar

14 Chron. Cos., II.84, 331–2; cf. Gregorii Magni Dialogi, II.22, 112.

15 For example, the demon ‘hissing like a serpent, braying like an ass and roaring like a lion’ in the Dialogi de miraculis, II.18, 1136, was derived from Gregorii Magni Dialogi, III.4, 144, although the subject of the former was a disobedient boy ignoring his father rather than a bishop casting out a devil.

16 Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 43–4. Cowdrey, Age of Abbot Desiderius, 32–3, suggests that the view of monasticism here was ‘conventional and moderate’, and not especially impressive.

17 Chron. Cas., III.26, 395. See Paul Meyvaert, ‘Peter the Deacon and the Tomb of St Benedict’, Revue Bénédictine 65 (1955), 3–70, repr. in idem, Benedict, Gregory, Bede and Others (London, 1977).

18 Dialogi de miraculis, II.4, 1129, cf. Chron. Cas., III.51, 434, and Petri Diaconi Ortus et vita iustorum cenobii Casinensis, ed. R. H. Rodgers (Berkeley, CA, 1972), 78; Dialogi de miraculis, II.7, 1130–1, cf. Chron. Cas., III.43, 421; Ortus et vita, 68; Dialogi de miraculis, II. 10, 1132, cf. Chron. Cas., II.55, 270

19 Storia de’ Normanni di Amato di Montecassino volgarizzata in antico francese, ed. Vincenzo de Bartholomeis, Fonti per la storia d’Italia 76 (Rome, 1935) [hereafter: Amatus], lib. IV, ch. 45, 217–18, cf. Ortus et vita, 71. Deathbed visions, e.g. Ortus et vita, 74 (a vision of the Virgin), 94 (a dying monk is brought water by St Odilo of Cluny), 95 (a vision of St Stephen).

20 Chron. Cas., IV.77, 541–2.

21 VQPA, 26. Peter had spent some time as a monk of Cluny and had attempted, not without considerable opposition, to introduce Cluniac customs to Cava, VQPA, 12–13. However, it has been argued that long-term Cluniac influence there was limited, see Giovanni Vitolo, ‘Cava e Cluny’, in Giovanni Vitolo and Simeone Leone, eds, Minima Cavensia. Studi in margine al IX volume del Codex diplomaticus Cavensis (Salerno, 1984), 19–44, and Hubert Houben, ‘Il monachesimo cluniacense e i monasteri normanni dell’Italia meridionale’, Benedictina 49 (1992), 341–61, repr. in idem, Mezzogiorno normanno-svevo: monasteri e castelli, ebrei e musulmani (Naples, 1996), 7–22.

22 Chronicon Casauriense, auctore Johanne Berardi, ed. Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores II.2 (Milan, 1726), 853.

23 Dialogide miraculis, II.3, 1128; Chron. Cas., II.22, 206–7, HI.8, 369 and III.20, 387. John III was abbot 998–1010.

24 Chronicon Casauriense, 885.

25 Amatus, III.50–1, 166–8; Chron. Cas., II.97,355.

26 VQPA, 11,23,27.

27 VQPA, 28, 30 (quote).

28 VQPA, 26–7.

29 VQPA, 20.

30 Chronicon Casauriense, 873–6.

31 These miracles were omitted from Muratori’s partial edition of the chronicle; they have been edited by Hubert Houben, ‘Laienbegrabnisse auf dem Klosterfriedhof. Unedierte Mirakelberichte aus der Chronik von Casauria’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken 76 (1996), 64–76. For the general context, see L. Feller, ‘Casaux et castra dans les Abruzzes: San Salvatore a Maiella et San Clemente a Casauria (XI-XIIIe siècles)’, Mélanges de l’Ecole française de Rome – Moyen-Age – Temps modernes 97 (1985), 145–82, esp. 152–61, and idem, ‘The Northern Frontier of Norman Italy, 1060–1140’, in G. A. Loud and A. Metcalfe, eds, The Society of Norman Italy (Leiden, Boston, MA, and Köln, 2002), 47–74, esp. 59–64.

32 Chron. Cas., II.70–2, 308–14 (quotes from 311–12).

33 Dialogi de miraculis, I.10, 1124; Chron. Cas., II.80,326–7.

34 Dialogi de miraculis, I.12, 1124–5; Chron. Cas., III.64, 446, with some differences in detail. Cf. Ortus et vita, 77. This appears to have been based upon Gregory of Tours, Liber de virtutibus S. Iuliani, ed. B. Krusch, MGH Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum 1 (Hannover, 1885), ch. 20, 573.

35 Chron. Cas., II.69, 306–7.

36 Chron. Cas., II.75, 317–18.

37 Chronkon Casauriense, 870.

38 VQPA, 21–2. The writer records that ‘the innocent child was received into paradise’.

39 Chron. Cos., II.59, 280–1.

40 Chronicon Casauriense, 873–4.

41 Dialogi de miraculis, I.13, 1125–6.

42 ActaSS, 5 June, 38.

43 Chronicon Casauriense, 888–9.

44 Chron. Cas., II.74, 316; Ortus et vita, 72 (in the time of Oderisius I, abbot 1087–1105).

45 Chron. Cas., III.20, 386 and IV.65, 527. The penitential exercises on the first occasion were increased after Peter Damian visited the monastery, at the request of Desiderius; see Howe, J., ‘Peter Damián and Monte Cassino’, Revue Bénédictine 107 (1997), 330–51, 337–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Chronicon Casauriense, 876, 880.

47 ActaSS, 5 June, 39. The populace had wanted to burn the offending canon, but John would not permit this, desiring ‘not the death of a sinner, but his conversion’.

48 A monk was cured of toothache and a mouth abscess, and another of fever, at the tomb of Alferius, VQPA, 11; a monk was cured of fever, another had a broken arm mended, and a third was cured of migraine at the tomb of Constable, while a smith was cured of eye problems by the dust from his tomb, ibid., 33–4.

49 Chronicon Casauriense, 854–5. The three cures involved a boy being educated in the cloister, with a high fever, a monk with gout, and a woman who had gone blind.

50 Ibid., 843.

51 Ibid., 876.

52 Dialogi de miraculis, II.9, 1131,II.14–15, 1134–5,II.17–18, 1135–6.

53 Thus, in the continuation, a peasant possessed by the devil, was cured at the tomb, as was a knight injured in a fall from his horse, while another knight whom Benedict had freed from captivity deposited his chains at the tomb, Chron. Cas., III.38, 414, IV.44,512–13, IV.58, 521–2. For the borrowings, Anna Maria Fagnoni, ‘I “Dialogi” di Desiderio nella “Chronica monasterii Casinensis”’, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., 34 (1993), 65–94. There is a helpful summary of the complexities of the chronicle authorship by H. Bloch, Monte Cassino in the Middle Ages, 3 vols (Rome, 1986), 1: 113–17.

54 ActaSS, 7 June, 114–16; cf. Mongelli, ‘Legenda’, Samnium 24 (1961), 97–112.

55 Chronicon Casauriense, 874, 887.

56 Gaiffier, B.de, ‘Translations et miracles de S. Mennas par Léon d’Ostie et Pierre du Mont-Cassin’, AnBoll 62 (1944), 5–32, 28–30 Google Scholar. The authorship of these miracles, as opposed to the Translatio, is doubtful.

57 Amatus, I.30, 39–41.

58 Chron. Cas., II.43–4, 247–52.

59 For the Fleury claims, see Ward, , Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 46–51.Google Scholar

60 For 1071, see Chron. Cas., III.29,398–402; Bloch, Monte Cassino, 118–21.

61 Chron. Cas., IV.29, 494–5.

62 VQPA, 35.