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Otto III’s Penance: A Case Study of Unity and Diversity in the Eleventh-Century Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Sarah Hamilton
Sarah Hamilton*
Affiliation:
King’s College, London
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Extract

In the spring of 999 the Emperor Otto III went on pilgrimage to the shrine of the Archangel Michael at Monte Gargano in southern Italy. His pilgrimage was not widely recorded; it was not referred to in any of the works produced in the Empire in the next half century, and only briefly mentioned in three South Italian works. But Otto’s pilgrimage was described more extensively in the eleventh-century vitae of two saints: the anonymous Greek Vita Nili and Peter Damian’s Vita Beati Romualdi. This article will make a case-study of the way in which the authors of these vitae used Otto’s pilgrimage to help construct the sanctity of their own subject, and of how far this reflects the degree of unity, and of diversity, between the Greek and Latin traditions of the Church in southern Italy in the first half of the eleventh century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 32: Unity and Diversity in the Church , 1996 , pp. 83 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1996

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References

1 For the dating of this episode, see Uhlirz, Mathilde, Jahrbücher des deutschen Reiches unter Otto II und Otto III, II: Otto III, 983-1002 (Berlin, 1954), pp. 292-3, 534–7 Google Scholar. Otto III’s surviving charters show him to have been at Capua on 20 Feb. 999 and Benevento on It March 999 - MCH Diplomatum Regum et Imperatorum Germaniae II, nos. 309-10, pp. 735-7.

2 The first of the South Italian accounts is eleventh-century: ‘In hoc autem venit Otto tertius imperator Capuam, habiit in Gargano ad Sanctum Michaelem et revertit Romam’, Chronicon Comitum Capuae, ed. N. Cilento in his Italia meridionale longobarda (Milan and Naples, 1966), p. 133. The other South Italian sources are twelfth-century: ‘Rex Otto venit Beneventum, et fecit praeceptum nostro monasterio de omnibus suis rebus. Postea ivit in monte Gargano’, Annales Beneventani, MGH. SS III, a. 997, p. 177; ‘Imperator Beneventum venit, et causa penitentie quam illi beatus Romualdus iniunxerat abiit ad montem Garganum’, Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, ed. H. Hoffmann, MGH. SS XXXIV, II. 24, p. 208. Hoffmann suggests that the source for this is Peter Damian’s Vita Romualdi, c. 25, ibid. p. xiii.

3 , ed. Giovanni Giovanelli (Grottaferrata, 1972), e. 91, p. 128 [hereafter VN] (the vita is more widely available in a less accurate edition in PG, 120, cols 9-166; both editions follow the same chapter divisions).

4 Peter Damian, Vita Beati Romualdi, ed. Tabacco, Giovanni, fonti per la Storia d’Italia, 94 (Rome, 1957)Google Scholar, c. 25, p. 53[hereafter VR).

5 Gay, J., L’Italie méridionale et l’empire byzantin (Paris, 1904), pp. 289–413 Google Scholar; Kreutz, Barbara M., Before the Normans. Southern Italy in the ninth and tenth centuries (Philadelphia, 1991), pp. 118–36.Google Scholar

6 Vita di S. Nilo, fondatore e patrono di Grottaferrata, Italian trans, with notes, ed. Giovanni Giovanelli (Grottaferrata, 1966), p. 247.

7 VR, c. 5, pp. 21-5; c. 26, p. 54; c. 27, p. 57.

8 VN, cc. 73-85, pp. 112-23. Bernard Hamilton raises the possibility that Romauld could have met Nilus at the monastery of S. Alessio in Rome in ‘S. Pierre Damien et les mouvements monastiques de son temps’, Studi Gregoriani, 10 (1975), pp. 175-202, reprinted in his Monastic Reform, Catharism and the Crusades (900-1300) (London, 1979) [hereafter Monastic Reform], ch. 6, p. 184

9 Patricia M. McNulty and Bernard Hamilton, ‘Orientale lumen et magistra latinitas: Greek influences on western monasticism’, Le Millénaire du Mont Athos, 963–1963. Études et Mélanges, 1 (Chevetogne, 1963), pp. 181-216 (Monastic Reform, ch. 5). Jean-Marie Sansterre, ‘Saint Nil de Rossano et le monachisme latin’, Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata, ns 45 (1991), pp. 339-86.

10 For a review of this historiography, with criticisms, see Marilyn Dunn, ‘Eastern influence on western monasticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries’, in J. D. Howard-Johnston, ed., Byzantium and the West C.850-C.1200. Proceedings of the XVIII Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Byzantinische Forschungen. Internationale Zeitschrift für Byzantinistik, 13 (Amsterdam, 1988), pp. 245-59.

11 Nilus, according to his hagiographer, deliberately chose obscurity in Latin-speaking lands when he left Calabria for Capua and Rome, rather than enjoy fame in the Eastern Empire; VN c. 72, pp. 112-13.

12 VN, cc. 73-85, pp. 112-23. Olivier Rousseau, ‘La Visite de Nil de Rossano au Mont-Cassin’, in La Chiesa Greca in Italia dall’VIII al XVI secolo. Atti del Convegno Storico Interecclesiale (Bari, 30 Apr.–4 Magg. 1969), 3 vols (Padua, 1973), 3, pp. 1111-37.

13 For theological ecumenism see Bernard Hamilton, ‘The monastery of S. Alessio and the religious and intellectual renaissance in tenth-century Rome’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 2 (1975), pp. 265-310 (Monastic Reform, ch. 2). Hamilton’s arguments have now been modified by Sansterre, ‘Saint Nil de Rossano et le monachisme latin’. For an example of political ecumenism, see Graham Loud, ‘Montecassino and Byzantium in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, in Margaret Mullett and Anthony Kirby, eds. The Theotokos Evergetis and eleventh-century monasticism, Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations, 6.1 (Belfast, 1994), pp. 30-55.

14 Russo, Francesco, ‘Gli Ascetica di S. Basilio Magno e S. Nilo’, Atti del Congresso Internazionale su S. Nilo di Rossano. 28 settembre-1 ottobre 1986 (Rossano and Grottaferrata, 1989), pp. 307–16.Google Scholar

15 Hamilton, ‘S. Pierre Damien’, pp. 184-9.

16 For consideration of the authorship and dating of the Vita Nili see Halkin, F., ‘S. Barthélémy de Grottaferrata. Notes critiques’, AnBoll, 61 (1943), pp. 202–10.Google Scholar

17 VN, editorial preface, pp. 31-45.

18 VN, pp. 35-7.

19 VR, p. liv.

20 VR, pp. iii-xxxiii.

21 Chronicles: Annales Quedlinburgenses, MCH.SS III, p. 74; Thietmari Merseburgensis Episcopi Chronicon, ed. R. Holtzmann, MGH.SRC ns 9, pp. 167-9; Annales Altahenses Maiores, ed. E. L. B. ab Oefele, MGH.SRG 4, p. 16; Lamperti Annales, in Lamperti Monachi Hersfeldensis Opera, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH.SRG 38, p. 48; Annales Hildesheimenses, MGH.SS III, p. 91; Brunwilarensis Monasterii Fundatorum Actus, MGH.SS XIV, pp. 131-2; Johannes Diaconus, Chronica Venetum, in Cronache Veneziane Antichissime, ed. Giovanni Monticolo, Fonti per la Storia d’Italia, 9 (Rome, 1890), pp. 154-5; Arnulfi gesta archiepiscoporum Mediolanensium, MGH.SS VIII, p. 10; Annales Beneventani, MGH.SS III, p. 177; Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, ed. H. Hoffmann, MGH.SS XXXIV, p. 208; Chronicon Romualdi II archiepiscopi Salernitani, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores VII (Milana 1725), col. 165; Rodulfus Glaber, Historiaram libri quinque, ed. Neithard Bulst and trans. John France and Paul Reynolds, OMT, 1.12, pp. 24–7; Adhémar of Chabannes, Chronique, ed. Jules Chavanon, Collection de textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire, 20 (Paris, 1897), iii, 31, p. 154. Other works: Peter Damian, Die Briefe des Petrus Damiana, ed. K. Reindel, MGH. Die Briefe des Deutschen Kaiserzeit, 4 vols (Munich, 1988), 2, no. 89, pp. 539–40; Benzonis episcopi Albensis ad Heinricum IV imperatorem Libri VII, MCH.SS XI, p. 624; Bonizonis episcopi Sutrini liber ad amicum, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH. Libelli de lite imperatomm et pontiftcum; saeculis XI et XII conscripti I (Hanover, 1891), pp. 582-3.

22 Benz, Karl, ‘Macht und Gewissen im Hohen Mittelalter. Der Beitrag des Refbrmmönchtums zur Humaniserung des Herrscherethos unter Otto III’, Studia Anselmiana, 85 (Rome, 1982), pp. 157–74.Google Scholar

23 For the view that hagiography should be seen as a form of historical narrative, see Lifshitz, Felice, ‘Beyond positivism and genre: “Hagiographical” texts as historical narrative’, Viator, 25 (1994), pp. 95–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 ‘Au moyen âge, écrire la vie d’un saint n’est pas raconter son histoire; c’est faire son éloge, et ce sont là deux tâches différentes’, Jean Leclcrcq, Saint Pierre Damien, ermite et homme d’église, Uomini e dottrine, 8 (Rome, 1960), p. 17.

25 Sansterre, Jean-Marie, ‘Les Coryphées des apôtres, Rome et la papauté dans les vies des Saint Nil et Barthélemy de Grottaferrata’, Byzantion, 55 (1985), pp. 516–43 Google Scholar; Colin R. Phipps, ‘Saint Peter Damian’s Vita Beati Romualdi: Introduction, Translation and Analysis’ (London University Ph.D. thesis, 1988).

26 This account is based on the version given in the various chronicles referred to at n.21 above.

27 Moehs, Teta E., Gregorius V 996-999: A Biographical Study, Päpste und Papsttum, 2 (Stuttgart, 1972), pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., pp. 59-60.

29 Annales necrologia Fuldenses, MCH.SS XIII, p. 210.

30 VN, cc. 89-90, pp. 126-7.

31 VN, c. 91, p. 128.

32 Basil the Great, The Morals, PG, 31, iii, col. 701; idem. The Shorter Rules, PG, 31, xiv, col. 1092.

33 Basil the Great. The Shorter Rules, PC, 31, vi, col. 1085.

34 Basil the Great. The Longer Rules, PC, 31, xxviii, col. 988.

35 VN, c. 92, p. 128.

36 VN, c. 93, p. 129.

37 Ibid.

38 The Shorter Rules, viii, col. 1088.

39 Ibid., xv, col. 1092.

40 VR, c. 25, pp. 52-4.

41 Ibid., p. 53.

42 ‘lecto etiam fulgentibus palliis strato, ipse in storia de papiris compacta tenera delicati corporis membra terebat.’ Ibid., p. 54.

43 Pelagius, Veria Seniorum. PL, 73, x. 76, cols 925-7.

44 VN, c. 91, pp. 127-8.

45 VR, c. 25, p. 53.

46 The most popular canon law collection of the eleventh century, c.1020, Burchard of Worms’ Decretum, contains several canons to this effect, e.g. PL, 140, xix, c. 5, cols 954-5.

47 Ibid., col. 956.

48 Gregorovius, Ferdinand, History of the City of Rome in the Middle Ages, trans. Mrs G. W. Hamilton, 2nd edn, 8 vols (London, 1900-9), 3, p. 433.Google Scholar

49 Darrouzès, J., Épistoliers Byzantins du Xe siècle, Archives de l’orient Chrétien, 6 (Paris, 1960), no. 12, p. 175.Google Scholar

50 VN, c. 14, p. 62.

51 VN, c. 53, pp. 95-6.

52 VN, c. 79, pp. 117-18.

53 VN, c. 9, pp. 54-8; c. 52, pp. 54-5; c. 72, pp. 111-12; c. 85, p. 123.

54 Masullo, Rita, ‘La Vita de San Nilo come testo biografico e narrativo’, in Atti del Congresso Internazionale su S. Nilo di Rossano. 28 settembre - 1 ottobre 1986 (Rossano and Grottaferrata, 1989), pp. 463–75.Google Scholar

55 VR, c. 25, p. 53.

56 For example, VR, c. 23, p. 49; c. 27, p. 56; c. 30, p. 66. He also described Otto as imperator when mentioning his relations with Crescentius’ wife, p. 53.

57 VR, c. 5, pp. 21-5; c. 11, pp. 32-3; c. 26, pp. 54-6.

58 VR, c. 30, p. 66.

59 VR, c. 7, pp. 26-7.

60 Phipps, ‘Saint Peter Damian’s Vita Beati Romualdi’, pp. 200-3.

61 Reindel, Die Briefe des Petrus Damiana, no. 89, pp. 539-40.

62 Darrouzès, Épistoliers Byzantins du Xe siècle, no. 1. pp. 165-6.

63 Uhlirz, Jahrbücher des deutschen Reiches, pp. 291-2, 534-7.

64 Hamilton ‘S. Pierre Damien’.

65 VN, c. 2, p. 48; VR, c. 8, p. 28.