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Anselm of Besate and Some North-Italian Scholars of the Eleventh Century1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

H. E. J. Cowdrey
H. E. J. Cowdrey
Affiliation:
Fellow, Chaplain and Tutor in Modern History, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford
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Extract

Scholarly life in eleventh-century Italy comes to the notice of English historians chiefly in connexion with Lanfranc of Pavia, who (in a striking phrase of Dom David Knowles) ‘sought a career and found a vocation north of the Alps’, and with Anselm of Aosta, who succeeded him as prior of Bee and as archbishop of Canterbury. About their early education we know but little. However, the pattern of their lives—an education in north Italy, then travel to distant lands, and the eventual discovery there of an employment or vocation which would scarcely have been possible at home—was not untypical. I shall seek to describe the kind of north-Italian scholarly circles in which Lanfranc, in particular, grew up, with a view to illustrating how scholars were educated, their later careers, and their place in the history of medieval learning, culture and society. Thus we may hope to learn something about the Italian background of the two great Norman archbishops of Canterbury and, more generally, about the ecclesiastical life of north Italy which the Gregorian Reform would soon in such large measure sweep away.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , April 1972 , pp. 115 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

page 115 note 2 Aosta was just over the border in the kingdom of Burgundy. Anselm's father was a Lombard.

page 115 note 3 Anselm's work has been edited by Dümmler, E., Anselm der Peripatetiker nebsl anderen Beiträgen zur Literaturgeschichte im elften Jahrhundert, Halle 1872Google Scholar, and by M. Manitius, Gunzo, Epistola ad Augienses, und Anselm von Besate, Rhetorimachia, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (= M.G.H.), Quellenzur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, ii, Weimar 1958. The references which follow are to the pages of Manitius's edition, of which there is an important review by Bullough, D. A. in English Historical Review, lxxv (1960), 487–91Google Scholar. Some particularly useful discussions are to be found in Grabmann, M., Die Geschichte der scholastischen Method, Freiburg 1909, i. 217–18Google Scholar; Ladner, G., Theologie und Politik vor dem Investiturstreit, 2nd ed., Darmstadt 1968, 27–33Google Scholar; Misch, G., Geschichte der Autobiographie, Frankfurt 1955, ii. pt. 1. 404–15Google Scholar; Manitius, M., Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, Munich 1923, ii. 708–15Google Scholar; Violante, C., ‘Anselmo da Besate’, Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, Rome 1961, iii. 407–9Google Scholar.

page 116 note 1 Rhet., 126–8, 140–2.

page 116 note 2 Rhet., 116, cf. 151–2.

page 116 note 3 For Anselm's education and travels, see Rhet., 99, 102, 144, 153–4, 159–60.

page 116 note 4 Rhet., 181.

page 116 note 5 Erdmann, C., Forschungen zwr politischen Ideenwelt der Frühmittelalters, Berlin 1951, 119–24Google Scholar; M.G.H., Diplomata, ed. P. F. Kehr, v. xxxiii–iv, xliv. Together with Manitius's Introduction, 66–74, these works provide a full account of the evidence for Anselm in the emperor's service.

page 117 note 1 Rhet., 104, 181.

page 117 note 2 Rhet., 102–3.

page 117 note 3 Rhet., 182–3.

page 117 note 4 Rhet., 128.

page 118 note 1 There are useful surveys of Italian education and culture in A. Dressier, Kultur- und Sittengeschichte der italienischen Geistlichkeit im 10. und n. Jahrhundert, Breslau 1890, an d Gualazzini, Richerche sidle scuole premiversitarie del medioevo, Milan 1943.

page 118 note 2 Opusc, xlv. 4: P.L., cxlv. 698.

page 118 note 3 Historia Mediolanensis, ii. 35, ed. L. C. Bethmann and W. Wattenbach, M.G.H., Scriptorum, viii. 71.

page 118 note 4 Lines 190–200, Wiponis opera, ed. H. Bresslau, 3rd ed., Scriptores rerum Germanic arum in usum scholarum, Hanover and Leipzig 1915, 81.

page 118 note 5 For discussions of Lanfranc's education and early career, see Southern, R. W., ‘Lanfranc of Bee and Berengar of Tours’, Studies in Medieval History presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. Hunt, R. W., Pantin, W. A. and Southern, R. W., Oxford, 1948, 27–48Google Scholar, and Barlow, F., ‘A View of Archbishop Lanfranc’, in this JOURNAL, xvi (1965), 163–77Google Scholar.

page 118 note 6 Loc. cit.

page 118 note 7 Opusc, xlv. 6: P.L., cxlv. 699.

page 119 note 1 Adhemar of Chabannes, Epistola de apostolatu sancti Martialis: P.L., cxli. 107–8. For the possession of books by individual scholars, cf. Rhet., 169.

page 119 note 2 Rhet., 138–50.

page 119 note 3 Rhet., 100.

page 199 note 4 He cited Priscian twice and Boethius frequently, particularly his In isagogen Porphyrii.

page 120 note 1 Rhet., 102.

page 120 note 2 Historiarum, ii. 12: Raoul Glaber, Les Cinq Livres de ses histoires, ed. M. Prou, Paris 1886, 50.

page 120 note 3 Rhet, 103.

page 120 note 4 Rhet, 99.

page 121 note 1 For Lanfranc's training in dialectic, see the essays by Southern and Barlow referred to above, 118, n. 5. Lanfranc referred to his own learning ‘in saecularibus litteris’: Ep. 3, cf. Ep. 36: Beati Lanfranci archiepiscopi Cantuariensis opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. J. A. Giles, Oxford and Paris 1844, i. 20, 56. His contemporaries wrote of his skill in the arts and especially dialectic, e.g. pope Nicholas n, Ep. xxx: P.L., cxliii. 1349–50; the antipope Clement in, Ep. iii, ed. F. Liebermann, ‘Lanfranc and the Antipope’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xvi (1901), 331; Williram of Ebersberg, Praefatio in Cantica canticorum, in Veterum scriptorum monumentorum … amplissima collectio, ed. E. Martène and U. Durand, Paris 1724, i. 507

page 121 note 2 Palazzini, P., ‘Note di diritto romano in S. Pier Damiano’, Studia et documenta historiae et iuris, xiii–xiv (1947–1948), 235–68Google Scholar. By eleventh-century standards Peter quoted classical authors somewhat infrequently: Hartmann, W., ‘Manegold von Lautenbach und die Anfänge der Frühscholastik’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, xxvi (1970), 120Google Scholar.

page 121 note 3 Opusc. xxxi. 7: P.L. cxlv. 540.

page 121 note 4 Rhet., 97–100; cf. Schramm, P. E., Kaiser, Rom und Renovatio, 2nd ed., Darmstadt 1957, 255–7Google Scholar; and, for the text of and notes on the Graphia-libellus, Schramm, op. cit., Leipzig and Berlin 1929, ii. 68–104.

page 121 note 5 Rhet., 181.

page 121 note 6 See J. Fleckenstein, Die Hofkapelle der deutschen Könige, Schriften der M.G.H., 16/ii, Stuttgart 1966, 96–7, 102–3, 176, 188–9, 193, 195, 198, 255, 257–8, 269.

page 122 note 1 Opusc, xlv. 6: P.L. cxlv. 700.

page 122 note 2 Ibid.

page 122 note 3 Adversus simoniacos, iii. 20–1, ed. F. Thaner, M.G.H., Libelli de lite, i. 223–6.

page 122 note 4 Paris, Bibliotheque nationale, lat. 7761, eleventh century, and, probably deriving from it, Bernkastel-Cues, St. Nicholas's Hospital, 52, later twelfth century.

page 122 note 5 Rhet., 157–8.

page 122 note 6 Diimmler, op. cit., 59–71.

page 122 note 7 Cf. Cowdrey, H. E. J., The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform, Oxford 1970, 250Google Scholar n. 5.

page 123 note 1 Ep. lxx: P.L., cxlvi. 1353; cf. Lanfranc, Ep. 3, ed. Giles, i. 20. The kinsman may have been Alexander's nephew, the future bishop Anselm II of Lucca, whose biographer Bardo spoke of him as ‘in arte grammatica et dialectica … peritus’: Vita Anselmi episcopi Lucensis, 2, ed. R. Wilmans, M.G.H., Scr., xii. 13. The same kinsman may also be referred to by Berengar, Die Hannoversche Briefsammlung (Hi), Briefe Berengars von Tours, 100, ed. C. Erdmann, M.G.H., Die Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit, v. 168. It has never been satisfactorily established that Alexander was himself a pupil of Lanfranc.

page 123 note 2 Lanfranc, Ep. 36, ed. Giles, i. 56. For the surprisingly few texts of the artes which Lanfranc quoted in his commentary on the Pauline epistles, see M. Gibson, ‘Lanfranc's ”Commentary on the Pauline Epistles” ‘, Journal of Theological Studies, new ser., xxii (1971), 104–5. However, as a biblical commentator, he believed that dialectic, if rightly used, confirmed the mysteries of God: In I Cor. i: P.L., cl. 157.

page 123 note 3 Opusc. xlv. 1: P.L., cxlv. 695.

page 123 note 4 Peter commonly expressed such views; see esp. his Epp. v, viii: P.L., cxliv. 260, 360; Sermo vi: P.L., cxliv. 535–8; Opusc, xxxvi. 12: P.L., cxlv. 614–15, and, most of all, ibid., xlv, De sancta simplicitate scientiae inflanti anteponenda: P.L., cxlv. 695–704. He no less vigorously dissociated himself from the regular study of civil law, e.g. Sermo i: P.L., cxliv. 511; Opusc., viii. 7: P.L., cxlv. 199.

page 124 note 1 Cf. R. W. Southern, St. Anselm and his Biographer, Cambridge 1963, 5.

page 124 note 2 Cf. Hartmann, art. cit., Deut. Arch., xxvi (1970), 110–18.