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The Maccabees as Exemplars in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Jean Dunbabin
Jean Dunbabin*
Affiliation:
St Anne’s College, Oxford
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Extract

When the court chaplain Wipo produced his Gesta Chuonradi in 1046 as an instruction in kingship for the young Henry III, he prefaced it with an indictment of contemporary writers’ laziness in failing to chronicle the deeds of their great men, although convenient models had been provided by pagan authors and Old Testament historians. The latter, in describing David’s single combats, Solomon’s counsel, Gideon’s magnanimity, and the battles of the Maccabees, had created a remarkable series of biographies illustrative of the different ways in which a man could serve the common weal. Their achievement deserved imitation. The main drift of Wipo’s argument is unfortunately too broad a theme for discussion here. What concerns us is simply that for him the Maccabees were the archetypes of heroic warriors, and that he expected his audience to be as familiar with their exploits as he was himself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 4: The Bible in the Medieval World , 1985 , pp. 31 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1985 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Dr Henry Mayr-Harting and Dr Paul Binski for helpful suggestions.

References

1 Die Werke Wipos, MGH SRG, p. 5. On Wipo see Smalley, Historians, pp. 72-3. Wipo was clearly concerned with Matthias and his sons, not with the Maccabean martyrs, whose fate was described in II Maccabees, vii, and whose feast was kept on 1 August. This paper shares the same concern.

2 PL, cix, 1125-1256.

3 Ibid., cxiv, 63.

4 On this see Merton, A., Die Buchmalerei in St. Gallen (Leipzig, 1912), pp. 64–6Google Scholar; Goldschmitt, A., German Illumination, 2 vols. (Florence, 1929), i, p. 22, and plates 72 and 73Google Scholar; Hubert, J., Porcher, J., and Volbach, W.F., Carolingian Art (London, 1970), p. 174, and plates 163 and 164.Google Scholar

5 McGrath, R.L., ‘The Romance of the Maccabees in Medieval Art and Literature’ (Ph. D. thesis, Princeton, 1963), Fine Arts, University Microfilms inc., Ann Arbor (Michigan), p. 127Google Scholar takes it for granted that they are, quoting ‘the venerable adage that the medieval artist never invents unless he is obliged to do so’. Goldschmitt, i, p. 22, seems less sure.

6 See fig. 1.

7 Merton, pp. 65-6.

8 Einhard and Notker the Stammerer. Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. L. Thorpe (London, 1969), pp. 162-4.

9 Duft, J., Die Ungaren in Sankt Gallen. Mittelalterliche Quellen zur Qeschichte des ungarischen Volkes in der Sanktgalter Stiftsbibliothek = Bibliotheca Sangallensis, i (Zurich—Constance/Lindau, 1959), pp. 9—13.Google Scholar

10 Horn, W. and Born, E., The Plan of St. Call, 3 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1979), ii, pp. 168–75.Google Scholar

11 Wallace-Hadrill, J.M., The Frankish Church (Oxford, 1983), p. 241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Colgrave and Mynors, Bede, EH, p. 3.

13 Wallace-Hadrill, p. 246.

14 MGH SS, IV, p. 636.

15 Diplomata belgica ante annum millesimum centesimum scripta, ed. M. Gysseling and A.C.F. Koch (Brussels, 1950), p. 144.

16 On this see Sabbe, E., ‘Deux points concernant l’histoire de l’abbaye de St. Pierre du Mont Blandin (x—xi siècles)’, RB, xlvii (1935), pp. 52–71.Google Scholar

17 Platelle, H., ‘L’oeuvre de Saint Gerard de Brogne à Saint-Amand’, RB, lxx (1960), pp. 127–41.Google Scholar

18 Dunbabin, J., France in the Making\843-1180 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 127, 248.Google Scholar

19 Vie de Gauzlin, abbé de Fleury, ed. R.H. Bautier and G. Labory (Paris, 1969), p. 38.

20 Guiliaume de Poitiers: Histoire de Guillaume le Conquérant, ed. R. Foreville (Paris, 1952), pp. 134-5.

21 Robinson, I. S., Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest. The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (Manchester, 1978), pp. 153–6.Google Scholar

22 MGH Lib., I, p. 298.

23 Ibid., p. 406.

24 PL clxxi, 1301-2.

25 Liber sancti Jacobi: Codex Calixtinus, ed. W.M. Whitehill (Santiago de Compostela, 1944). p. 337.

26 McGrath, pp. 19-32, 179-238.

27 Smeets, J.R., La chevalerie de Judas Macabé (Assen, 1955), Vv. 7918–26.Google Scholar