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Miracles, Missionaries and Manuscripts in Eighth-Century Southern Germany
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
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There was a certain poor little crippled girl, who sat near the gate of the monastery begging alms … she committed fornication When her time came, she wrapped the child in swaddling clothes and cast it at night into a pool…. When day dawned, another woman came to draw water and seeing the corpse of the child, was struck with horror … and reproached the holy nuns … ‘Look for the one who is missing from the monastery and then you will find out who is responsible for this crime’. […] no one was absent except Agatha who … had gone with full permission….
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References
1 Rudolf of Fulda, Vita Leobae, ch. 12: The Life of Saint Leoba, transl. Talbot, C. H., in Noble, Thomas F. X. and Head, Thomas, eds, Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (London, 1995), 255–77 Google Scholar. For the Latin text, see the edition by G. Waitz, MGH.S 15.1 (Hannover, 1887), 127.
2 See Talbot, C., The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries (London, 1954)Google Scholar; Wood, Ian, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe 400–1050 (Harlow, 2001), 67–8 Google Scholar; Hollis, Stephanie, Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate (Woodbridge, 1992), 283–8 Google Scholar; Berschin, Walter, Biographie und Epochenstil III: Karolingische Biographie, 750–920 n. Chr. (Stuttgart, 1991), 260–2.Google Scholar
3 On the Italian martyr narratives, the classic starting points are Albert Dufourcq, Étude sur les Gesta martyrum romains, 5 vols [Rome, 1988 (vols 1–4 originally published Paris, 1886–1910)], and Hippolyte Delehaye, Étude sur le légendier romain: les saints de novembre et de décembre (Brussels, 1936). For a more recent survey and further references, see Walter Berschin, Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter, 3 vols, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters 8–10 (Stuttgart, 1986–91); Kate Cooper, ed., The Roman Martyrs and the Politics of Memory, Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000) and Clare Pilsworth, ‘Vile Scraps: “Pamphlet” Manuscripts, Miscellanies and the Transmission and Use of the Italian Martyr Narratives in Early Medieval Western Europe’, in preparation.
4 For a useful historiographical overview of the notion of conversion see Higham, N.J., The Convert Kings: Power and Religious Affiliation in Early Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 1997), 7–52 Google Scholar. On Christianization in early medieval rural Europe in general, see the articles in Cristianizzazione ed organizzazione ecclesiastica delle campagne nell’Alto Medioevo: espansione e resistenze, Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 28, 2 vols (Spoleto, 1982). The most up-to-date survey of missionary work in early medieval continental Europe is Wood, Missionary Life, esp. 57–78 for Würzburg and the surrounding area.
5 On the problem of language and missionary work in early medieval Europe outside of Latin-speaking regions, see in particular Anna Maria Luiselli Fadda, ‘The Vernacular and the Propagation of the Faith in Anglo-Saxon Missionary Activity’, in Pieter N. Holtrop and Hugh McLeod, eds, Missions and Missionaries, SCH.S 13 (Woodbridge, 2000), 1–15.
6 Hollis, , Anglo-Saxon Women, 282.Google Scholar
7 Wood, , Missionary Life, 57–60, 67 and 159; idem, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751 (London, 1994), 306 Google Scholar.
8 On the practice of infanticide in the Middle Ages, see Langer, W., ‘Infanticide: a Historical Survey’, History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1973-4), 353–74 Google ScholarPubMed and Coleman, E., ‘Infanticide in the Early Middle Ages’, in Stuard, Susan Mosher, ed., Women in Medieval Society (Philadelphia, PA, 1976), 47–71.Google Scholar
9 See above, n. 6; see also Bischoff, B., ‘Manuscripts in the Age of Charlemagne’, in idem, Manuscripts and Libraries in the Age of Charlemagne, ed. and transl. Gorman, Michael (Cambridge, 1994), 20–55, 42–4 Google Scholar. On the earliest Würzburg library catalogue, see Lowe, E. A., ‘An Eighth-Century List of Books in a Bodleian Manuscript from Würzburg and its Probable Relation to the Laudian Acts’, Speculum 3 (1928), 3–15 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in idem, Palaeographical Papers 1907–1965, ed. Bieler, Ludwig, 2 vols (Oxford, 1972), 1: 239–50.Google Scholar
10 For examples of this ‘whole manuscript’ approach, see Lifshitz, F., ‘Gender and Exemplarity East of the Middle Rhine: Jesus, Mary and the Saints in Manuscript Context’, in Cooper, ed. The Roman Martyrs and the Politics of Memory, 325–44; Kendrick, Laura, Animating the Letter: the Figurative Embodiment of Writing from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Columbus, OH, 1999)Google Scholar; Gamble, Harry Y., Books and Readers in the Early Church: a History of Early Christian Texts (New Haven, CT, and London, 1995)Google Scholar; McKitterick, Rosamund, Books, Scribes and Learning in the Frankish Kingdoms, 6th-9th Centuries (Aldershot, 1994)Google Scholar; Reimitz, Helmut, ‘Ein Karolingisches Geschichtsbuch aus Saint Amand: Studien zur Wahmehmung von Identität und Raum im frühen Mittelalter’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Vienna, 1999 Google Scholar; Schlusemann, Rita, Hermans, J. M. M. and Hoogvliet, Margriet, eds, Sources for the History of Medieval Books and Libraries (Groningen, 2000)Google Scholar.
11 On script types in general see Brown, Michelle P., A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (London, 1990), esp. 48–57 Google Scholar, and Bischoff, Bernard, Latin Palaeography. Antiquity and the Middle Ages, transl. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge, 1990), 90–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Lowe, E. A., Codices latini antiquiores: a Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century, 11 vols (Oxford, 1934-66), 9: 55 Google Scholar, no. 1435; see also McKitterick, R., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Germany: Reflections on the Manuscript Evidence’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 9 (1989), 291–329 Google Scholar, repr. in eadem, Books, Scribes and Learning, 300; Bischoff, Bernhard and Hofman, Josef, Libri sancti Kyliani: die Würzburger Schreibschule und die Dombibliothek im VIII. und IX. Jahrhundert (Würzburg, 1952), 7–8 Google Scholar. For the earliest manuscript witnesses for the Vita Leobae itself, see G. Waitz’s edition in MGH.S 15.1, 118–20, and the Namur hagiographic manuscript database at http://bhlms.fltr.ucl.ac.be (consulted: 22 October 2004).
13 On Eugenia’s cult, see Agostino Amore, J martin di Roma (Rome, 1975), 125–6. On the textual history of the passio, see below, nn. 17 and 18.
14 Potitus’ cult in the early middle ages appears to have been centred in Southern Italy, and Sardinia eventually appears to have acquired the relics. Potitus is attested in the ninth-century Neapolitan Liber Pontificalis. See Biblioteca Sanctorum 10 (Rome, 1968), 1072–4; Passio Potiti, BHL 6908, is the version found in Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS M.p.th.q. 28a and is edited in ActaSS Ian. 1, 754–7.
15 Fontaine, Jacques, ‘La Vocation monastique selon saint Isidore de Séville’, Studi medievali, 3rd ser., 6 (1965), 163–95, 164–5 and 185, repr. in idem, Tradition et actualité chez Isidore de Séville (London, 1988), VII.Google Scholar
16 PL 83, 827, no. 474, ch. 5.
17 Passio Eugeniae, BHL 2666 is the version used in MS M.p.th.q. 28a and is edited in PL 73, 605–20.
18 One typical example is to be found in chapter two of the Passio Potiti, where a ‘matrona’ called Quiriaca is simultaneously cured of her leprosy and converted to Christianity: ‘Et statim sana facta est mulier ilia, et splenduit caro eius, sicut radij solis: et credidit Quiriaca’, Passio Potiti, ch. 2, ActaSS, 756. See also, Passio Eugeniae, PL 73,605–20 (BHL 2666). BHL 2667, which is believed to be the earliest version of the passio and has a more confused chronology than BHL 2666, is discussed and translated by H. I. Jones, The Desert and Desire: Virginity, City and Family in the Roman Martyr Legends of Agnes and Eugenia’, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Manchester, 1998. BHL 2666 may have been chosen by the compilers of MS M.p.th.q. 28a because it not only attempts a credible historical chronology, but also places more emphasis on education: see M. Humphries, ‘Eugenia’, unpublished dossier from the British Academy funded Gesta martyrum project (1996–99) directed by Kate Cooper, University of Manchester.
19 Two other manuscripts of Isidore’s Synonyma were in circulation in the Würzburg region by the ninth century: Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, MS M.p.th.f. 79, copied in Southern England in the eighth century but in use in the Würzburg region by the ninth century at the latest, and MS M.p.th.q. 28b, fols 43–64 (incomplete), copied in the Würzburg region (like 28a probably in a female scriptorium) at the end of the eighth century. The latter is therefore slightly later than MS M.p.th.q. 28a, but signals the great interest in this text in this region – a total of three surviving pre-ninth century manuscripts of a single text in one region is a large number! Certainly as far as the Prologue of the Synonyma is concerned, none of the copyists appear to be using any of these codices as direct exemplars, although it is possible that the commissioners/scribes themselves are adapting the Prologue. M.p.th.f. 79 is, unlike that of 28a, a complete text of Isidore: most of Book II in 28b is missing, so we cannot ascertain if it was following the structure of 28a or not.
20 Passio Potiti, ch. 22, ActaSS, 757.
21 For a recent overview of the idea of purity in early medieval monasticism, see Albrecht Diem, Keusch und rein: eine Untersuchung zu den Ursprüngen des frühmittelalterlichen Klosterwesens und seinen Quellen (Amsterdam, 2000).
22 Passio Eugeniae, ch. 28, 620.
23 Ibid., ch. 29,620.
24 Ibid., ch. 11, 612: ‘Matrona quaedam Alexandrina, caeteris matronis praestantior, nomine Melanthia, … venit ad earn, quia quartana gravissime et iam per annum et eo amplius vexabatur. Quam cum beata Eugenia oleo perunxisset, omnem continuo violentiam fellis evomuit. Et sanissima reddita’.
25 Ibid., ch. 12,612: ‘auri pondus immensum’.
26 Ibid., ch. 15,614: ‘scidit… tunicam, qua erat induta, et apparuit femina’.
27 On the issue of sexual purity and ascetism in (male) monasticism, see Conrad Leyser, ‘Masculinity in Flux: Nocturnal Emission and the Limits of Celibacy in the Early Middle Ages’, in D. M. Hadley, ed., Masculinity in Medieval Europe (London and New York, 1999), 103–20; idem, Authority and Ascetism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2000), esp. cc. 1 and 2, 2–61.
28 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS 4554, and Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1556 (Lowe, Codices latini antiquiores, 9: 5, no. 1242, and 9: 19, no. 1502) are both roughly contemporary with MS M.p.th.q. 28a, while MS M.p.th.q. 28b was probably copied some decades earlier. All have been attributed to South or South-Western German scriptoria, and all include Italian martyr narratives, having no less than fourteen Italian passiones between them (including in some cases more than one version of each saint’s passio). This indicates the wide circulation of a broad range of Italian passiones in early medieval Southern Germany.