Sometime in the 970s or 980s Abbot Werdolph of Lure, a small Benedictine house in a region of present-day France where the plain of the Saône River meets the low wooded mountains of the Vosges region,Footnote 1 commissioned a cleric by the name of Theoderic to write a Life of his institution's Irish founder St. Deicolus (d. presumably around 620).Footnote 2 The resulting Vita Deicoli, a narrative of about 9000 words in the longer of two known versions, was part of a surge in the continental production of Lives of Insular saints around the turn of the millennium.Footnote 3 Some of this hagiographic activity was surely inspired by a recent wave of religious migrants from the British Isles, particularly in the former middle kingdom of Lotharingia and (from ca. 1000 onwards) east of the Rhine, and by the fact that a number of these individuals achieved prominent roles in ecclesiastical contexts, as abbots, teachers, and intellectuals.Footnote 4 And this writing was also influenced by the strong interest at the time in how older narratives depicted heroic acts of ascetic self-abnegation, religious peregrination, eremitical withdrawal, and apostolic action, all of which were themes that appealed greatly to contemporary audiences.Footnote 5
But in addition to these impulses, the new literary production was driven by the sheer plasticity of the memory of Irish saints and their achievements, whether in the conduct they promoted, their relationships with other peregrini and with various continental agents both lay and religious, or in their long-term impact on the religious landscape. Late tenth- and early eleventh-century authors who were looking to address then-current questions on the historicity, organization, and spirituality of religious communities discovered that this plasticity allowed them to project institutionally and ideologically convenient answers to these questions onto a legitimizing past.Footnote 6 Previous research on the Vita Deicoli has revealed that it too was influenced by this malleability of memory. Besides celebrating St. Deicolus's significance as a disciple of St. Columbanus, his virtues, and his achievements first as a hermit and then as a monastic founder, it also includes a long and detailed postscript that recounts the secularization of Lure's estate in the latter decades of the ninth century; the devastating impact of an assault by Hungarian invaders in 937; and the 959 re-foundation under the auspices of the German King Otto I. Because this postscript is so extensive, scholars have been able to establish in considerable detail how Theoderic tailored his account of the abbey's early seventh-century origins to reflect two things: first, the circumstances of Lure's (real or fictive) resurrection as a monastic house in the tenth century; and second, Abbot Werdolph and his monks’ subsequent relationship with former and then-current stakeholders in their institution.Footnote 7
This ‘local’ interpretation of the Vita is relevant to our understanding of the narrative's content and context of creation. But its success with scholars is probably also the reason why other parts of the narrative have so far eluded detailed investigation. Of particular note is the inclusion after the brief prologue of a long introductory section that is known to scholars as the “second prologue.” In its first part, Theoderic gives an overview of major landmarks in West Francia, Burgundy, and Lotharingia's religious landscape by listing fourteen episcopal centers and three monastic ones (the latter at Fleury, Sankt Maximin in Trier, and Luxeuil, a selection that may be surprising given the towering reputation of major monastic centers like Cluny and Gorze in traditional accounts of tenth-century monasticism), naming for each of them the principal saints whose relics they kept.Footnote 8 And in the second part of this second prologue, the hagiographer also provides a prequel-like account to his description of Deicolus's achievement as a monastic founder: the foundation of Luxeuil abbey by St. Columbanus, the latter's relationship with his disciples Gallus and Deicolus, and the two men parting company from Columbanus soon after his exile from Luxeuil. In addition to these features, the Vita is also notable for a number of remarkable statements on monastic identity and practice that are scattered throughout this and other parts of the text. In one of these, Theoderic makes a point of noting that Columbanus had chosen to wear the cuculla, a hooded cowl, instead of the cucullus, a two-part garment consisting of a cowl and a separate hood.
It is tempting to dismiss both the entire second prologue and the scattered comments about monastic identity and practice as a routine mix, part hagiographical commonplace, part demonstration of authorial erudition, and part talking up an obscure local saint and his minor foundation to give the appearance of broader relevance.Footnote 9 In particular, the quip about Columbanus's style of dress may strike the modern observer as profoundly anachronistic. Yet as this study hopes to show, these aspects of the text, along with its early transmission history, and the context in which this and related narratives as well as several manuscript compilations originated, reveal to us how Theoderic and some of his contemporaries used the plasticity of the memory of Columbanian monasticism in order to mobilize it for institutional purposes without being limited by it spiritually. Put differently, Theoderic did not feel constrained by the neo-Columbanian tradition in which he embedded his account of St. Deicolus's life and Lure's origins and expanded it with other elements as he saw fit.
Each of the five sections in this article considers a different aspect of the Vita Deicoli's multi-layered message. In the first we take a new look at the narrative's discourse from a strictly local viewpoint of the community of Lure, arguing that the goal of ensuring the future stability of the abbey's administration drove the narrative's creation. And in the next four sections we each time take a step further back from this local viewpoint, in order to consider Theoderic's ulterior motives. The first focuses on his argument about Luxeuil abbey and what it might tell us about his response to then-current abbatial policies at Luxeuil and Lure. The next section expands evidence of this relationship to include indications of Luxeuil's efforts to establish links with a number of (real or alleged) Columbanian foundations in West Francia and Burgundy, hypothesizing on efforts to establish an ‘imagined community’ of such institutions with Luxeuil at its center. Any conclusions that one might be tempted to draw about the impact of these links on the spirituality and self-understanding of different communities are nuanced in the final two sections. One of these considers Theoderic's references to the abbeys of Fleury and Sankt Maximin and unpacks their relevance to his perception of institutional and spiritual renewal in late tenth-century monasticism. And the other is about how the Vita's outlook on ascetic spirituality bears a striking resemblance to contemporary accounts from the wider milieu around the Lotharingian abbey of Gorze.
Lure Abbey and the Vita Deicoli
Although the Vita Deicoli extensively discusses the origins of Lure abbey as an early 620s foundation by the Irishman Deicolus, neither that event nor the existence of an individual of that name among Columbanus's followers can be verified through other sources.Footnote 10 It is possible, but far from certain, that Lure was founded by an Abbot Deicolus who lived about two generations later and is named (albeit without mention of his institution) in the dedication note of the late seventh-century Life of Germanus, a former monk of Luxeuil and abbot of Grandval (d. 675).Footnote 11 What we do know for certain is that by the early ninth century there existed a religious institution of unknown affiliation and membership on the same site that Abbot Werdolph and his monks occupied at the end of the tenth century.Footnote 12 The earliest reliable reference to it is in the 819 Notitia de servitio monasteriorum, a list of monastic houses and the services Emperor Louis the Pious expected to receive from them, for his own benefit and that of the Empire.Footnote 13 In the Notitia, Lure abbey is mentioned in the category of institutions that were exempt from providing any financial or military aid and owed prayers only. We can assume, therefore, that the membership and estate were quite small and that the community could not afford any extra charges.
In line with what happened to countless monasteries across the Carolingian Empire, the abbey's situation in the mid-to-later ninth century subsequently shifted as the emphasis of political power moved from the royal court to territorial entities. Lure abbey briefly re-emerges from documentary silence in an eleventh- or twelfth-century forgery of a charter by King Lothar II, which is dated 865 and may or may not derive from an authentic document.Footnote 14 According to the Vita Deicoli, Lure abbey was one of the institutions Lothar subsequently gave to his concubine Waldrada (d. 869), who allegedly chased off the incumbent Abbot Icho and appointed her relative Eberhard as advocate. Following her death, the text continues, Eberhard “invaded” the abbey and turned it into a private estate.Footnote 15 Whatever may be the truth value of these latter two statements, we do know that between ca. 885 and 959 Lure was held by Eberhard's family, a branch of the Etichonids, as a heritable property. In this period they acted as counts of Alsace: Eberhard's son Hugo succeeded him as count and retained ownership of the estate after his father's death in the early part of the tenth century.Footnote 16
Still, according to the Vita, this state of affairs ended when Hugo's three sons fell ill, due to their sacrilegious conduct at Deicolus's grave. All four of them did penance by taking monastic vows and by subsequently calling on Abbot Baltramn of Alanesberg to come to Lure and re-establish Deicolus's old monastery.Footnote 17 And they also sought the German King Otto I's formal approval of the re-foundation, which was duly granted. However, a charter by Otto dated 6 April 959 gives a completely different account.Footnote 18 It claims that the king, on finding that Abbot Baltramn and his congregatio of Benedictine brothers were living in conditions that were “very unsuitable for use by monks,” allowed them to relocate to Lure “so that they can abandon the world and follow the precepts of the Rule of St. Benedict faithfully.”Footnote 19 This was possible, the charter continues, because two of Hugo's sons, Hugo and Eberhard, had previously transferred the estate of Lure into his, Otto's, hands. Besides adding two properties to the original estate — one in the locality of Wolfisheim, the other near Rosheim — Otto also proclaimed his protection and that of his successors over the abbey. He transferred the abbey's ownership (jus proprietatis) to the Apostolic See, awarded the monks the right to freely elect their abbot, and prohibited any bishop or archbishop from making undue claims over it. According to the Vita, Baltramn's tenure began auspiciously with the construction of a new sanctuary, but was cut short by his death on 15 August 960.Footnote 20 He was succeeded by his nephew Werdolph, who set out to consolidate the abbey's estate and later also commissioned the Vita Deicoli.Footnote 21
Hans Hummer's analysis has shown that Lure abbey's re-foundation must be understood in the light of growing East Frankish influence in the former kingdom of Burgundy. This process had been ongoing for several decades, but in the middle of the century King Otto drastically expedited it by taking an active interest in the restoration of former monastic institutions and by strategically reshaping their relationship with the region's aristocratic stakeholders. When one of Hugo's sons, Guntramn, fell out of favor with the king, his siblings Hugo and Eberhard were likely pressured to transfer control over Lure's estate and to allow for the foundation of a Benedictine monastery that was graced with an exceptionally generous set of liberties and privileges.Footnote 22 Judging by the Vita Deicoli, the monks subsequently felt a great deal of resentment at the Etichonids's alleged abuse of their institution before 959. And they remained alert about challenges to their newly won status, with good reason so it turns out: in 1016, then-incumbent Abbot Immo had to ask for an intervention by King Henry II of Germany to undo Count Eberhard's (a grandson of Count Hugo's) usurpation of Lure's estate.Footnote 23 In response to these fears and tensions, in the 970s or 980s Theoderic crafted the Vita Deicoli, an ingenious account of the abbey's early seventh-century origins that legitimized Otto's intervention and buttressed the community's privileged status. For this he relied on the Vita Galli II (in particular its foundation account of the abbey of St Gall), possibly the Vita Antidii (for Deicolus's journey to Rome), the Vita Ursicini (for the theme of persecution and conflicts with outsiders), and finally also Otto's charter (for the claim that the Merovingian King Chlotarius had granted a similar privilege in the early 620s).Footnote 24
In light of these strategies, it may seem surprising that the Vita gives the Ottonian sovereign only a subsidiary role in the story of the re-foundation.Footnote 25 Hummer speculates that Theoderic, even though he deliberately cast the Etichonids’ memory in the worst possible light, wanted to make an exception for Hugo and his three sons because they had shown compunction for their crimes by taking vows and had possibly even joined the monastic community after Baltramn had taken office. Yet if we consider the short time that had elapsed between the events of 959 and the Vita's redaction in the 970s or 980s, it becomes obvious that a more substantial reason must have driven him to intervene so drastically in narrating events that were still within living memory. Indeed, it appears that Theoderic's goal was to normalize relations with members of Hugo's family who felt humiliated or short-changed by Otto's intervention. This he did in two ways. One was to give a less inflammatory reading of the re-foundation than the one in Otto's charter.Footnote 26 And the other was to avoid making overt references either to the sovereign's intervention or to the charter itself.
This interpretation is backed up by a 1016 charter by King Henry II, which takes a similar narrative position. It rehearses the contents of Otto's earlier grant but makes no mention of it (or of Otto) and claims to derive three privileges from Carolingian rulers Pippin, Charlemagne, and Louis the Pious.Footnote 27 Evidently Abbot Immo and his monks were looking to bring an end to the dispute with Count Eberhard and relied on Otto's charter to make their case. But they probably also realized that explicitly referring to that document and to Otto's aggressive action against Eberhard's relatives would have still been painful for family members, regardless of their current relationship with the abbey by this point. Judging by the similarities in argument between Henry's charter and the Vita, Immo inherited this strategy of reconciliation from his predecessor Werdolph, possibly because he realized that it had been effective with at least one branch of the Etichonid family. In Wibert's mid-eleventh-century biography of Pope Leo IX, a descendant of Hugo's son Hugo, we read that Hugo's sons Hugo and Eberhard had entered the monastery late in life and that other Etichonid relatives of Leo's had generously patronized the abbey.Footnote 28 And Leo himself also confirmed the abbey's privileges and took additional measures to protect it from undue demands by the local advocate.Footnote 29 In the meantime, Lure's leadership had also taken steps to normalize the relationship with the region's clerical authorities, despite its exempted status. In 1031 the newly elected Abbot Durand made the traditional promise of obedience before the bishop of Strasbourg, even though he was not technically obliged to do so: a written record of that promise was duly entered in the bishop's archives.Footnote 30
Lure's written legacy from the decades around the year 1000 thus shows itself to be part of an effort to establish and legitimize a vision of the abbey's status as an independent institution. It was also one among several attempts to erase the bad auspices under which its relationship with former lay and clerical stakeholders had started, a published token of good will. This local interpretation reflects the discourse of the Vita Deicoli as it is known to us through manuscript copies from the twelfth century onwards.Footnote 31 However, it does not explain all the details of the text as Theoderic wrote it and in fact narrows our understanding of a considerably more complex narrative. Certainly the Vita presents a well-conceived if fairly straightforward (and for the time very common) argument about a minor abbey's invented seventh-century origins and its alleged mid-tenth-century resurrection as a highly emancipated institution, but it does much more besides. This becomes obvious if we consider the Vita in its original form.
Co-Creating a New Columbanian Tradition
The early eleventh-century codex London, BL, Add. 21917 is the only manuscript version of the Vita that includes the second prologue, mentioned at the beginning of this study.Footnote 32 This block of text of more than 2000 words begins (as we already saw) with an overview of fourteen urban centers and three monastic ones. The final stop on its literary journey, Luxeuil abbey, is also the hagiographer's literary destination, for his stated purpose in the next part of the second prologue is to explain why “[Luxeuil] is spiritually known as the light of the sheep” (lux ovium).Footnote 33 It briefly describes the poor state of religious life in Gaul at the turn of the sixth century; Columbanus's origins as a Scottus, his education, and his early ascetic career as described in Jonas's Vita Columbani; and the fact that he was joined by his followers Gallus and (so the author claims at least) Deicolus on a peregrinatio to Burgundy. Here Columbanus initially became a hermit but soon decided to “construct the Lord's sheepfold, in this place that henceforth became known as the name Luxeuil.”Footnote 34 After having founded Luxeuil, he was soon forced into exile together with Gallus and Deicolus. Both these men shortly went their own way: Gallus was the first to leave his master and departed into the land of the Suevi and Alemanni, where he preached among the heathen. Deicolus, who was already an old man, preferred to remain in the region and looked for a place to withdraw to a cell of his own. At this point the two versions of the Vita become (nearly) identical again.
In this second prologue we can see another major discourse in the Vita, one that pertains to Lure's connection with Columbanus's legacy and especially also with Luxeuil. Yet so far, it has received no in-depth attention from scholars. In part, this is due to the fact that lengthy arguments about monasticism's past and invented links between a minor saint and one or several famous contemporaries are common tropes in hagiographies from the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.Footnote 35 And another reason for the scholarly silence is that Luxeuil's history in the decades around the year 1000 is (comparatively speaking) poorly documented, among other things as a result of a fire that raged through the convent buildings in 1200.Footnote 36 Nonetheless, there is enough evidence to say that the abbey had gone through a difficult period in the later ninth and early tenth centuries, for reasons that were probably quite similar to those that we find described in the Vita Deicoli.Footnote 37 And we also know that mid-to-late tenth-century abbots worked towards a restoration or at least a reorganization of their institution's dispersed estate. Two documented trades of properties with the abbey of Cluny from the years 942/63 and 984 fit that objective.Footnote 38 And in his Vita Waldeberti (a collection of miracles attributed to Waldebert, Luxeuil's third abbot), former Luxeuil oblate Adso of Montier-en-Der (d. 992) focussed heavily on protection and restoration of monastic properties, presumably in an attempt to bolster the confidence of Luxeuil's leadership in their ongoing efforts to protect and augment the monastic estate.Footnote 39
Alongside these indications of attempts at institutional restoration or renewal, we also have scattered glimpses of moves to revitalize the abbey's spiritual and intellectual life. A tenth-century manuscript of Smaragdus's commentary on the Epistles and the Gospels may have originated in such a context.Footnote 40 But our best evidence relates to the work and impact of a local priest and schoolmaster named Constantius, who was also active as an author and a scribe. According to a late medieval report, he composed a treatise on the properties of liquids.Footnote 41 And in 1004 he finished working on a copy of Boethius's Geometry and various other texts on related subjects.Footnote 42 When he died a few years later, a monk named Gudinus was moved to compose a poetic lament (planctus), in which he expressed the monks’ shock at the loss of their master.Footnote 43
As these processes of restoration and renewal were unfolding, the Luxeuil monks also began taking an active interest in promoting their institution as a major regional center of intellectual and spiritual life. In his planctus Gudinus makes a highly exaggerated comment that Henry II, on hearing the news of the schoolmaster's death, had said that he feared there would never again be such a highly learned man in his realm.Footnote 44 And not long after Constantius's death his copy of the Geometry ended up in the collection of Bishop Weinhar of Strasbourg (1001–1028), possibly as a result of the Luxeuil monks' efforts (which would be strikingly contemporary to the above-cited ones by Lure abbey) to establish a friendly relationship with the local episcopate.Footnote 45 At the same time, the community also fostered awareness of Luxeuil's significance as the most prominent institution in the Columbanian tradition and their own role as custodians of the saint's institutional legacy. Although they did not produce any new hagiographical narratives for that purpose, they did rely on a method of co-creation of such texts with authors who were working in other places. Adso's Vita Maldeberti, which was written roughly around the same time as the Vita Deicoli, alludes several times to the fact that the Luxeuil monks informed its contents, which is not surprising given the author's personal links to his former institution.Footnote 46 That text, alongside Adso's Lives of Frodobert of Moutier-le-Celle and Bercharius of Montier-en-Der, celebrates early medieval Luxeuil's reputation as a highly efficient organization, strict in its observance of Columbanus's Rule, and famous for the ascetic fervour of its members and the quality of its education.Footnote 47 And on re-reading the Vita Deicoli, one cannot help but notice the discursive similarities with, and the way it complements, Adso's work. More specifically the Vita Deicoli implies that Luxeuil, besides its monumental historical significance, was still a major beacon of monastic spirituality and a source of inspiration for monastic communities across the wider region, and as such belonged to an elite cohort of monastic centers alongside Fleury and Sankt Maximin.Footnote 48
Based on these indications, we can reasonably argue that Theoderic's hagiographic work for Lure abbey deliberately echoes a contemporary Luxeuil discourse about that institution's past and present significance. The resulting marriage of institutional narratives in the Vita Deicoli should not surprise us. From a slightly later period we have several hints that the institutional destinies of the two monasteries had begun to converge. In the 1010s and again in the 1040s and 1050s they were probably implicated in a multi-abbacy.Footnote 49 And during these phases both institutions also obtained major privileges that confirmed their freedom from lay and (especially) clerical interference, which adds further credence to the notion that their governance was very much aligned at the time.Footnote 50 Furthermore, Theoderic's profile as a well-travelled individual and a prolific hagiographer makes some sort of joint hagiographical venture between Lure and Luxeuil at the very least plausible. Hartmut Hoffmann's reconstruction of Theoderic's biography reveals him to have been a native of “Gaul” (which could mean any region west of the Rhine), who started his career working either in a cathedral community or as a parish priest, subsequently moving to Lure abbey in the 970s or 980s. After this he made profession at Fleury in the 980s or early 990s (but not later than 992), travelled several times to Italy (visiting, among other places, Rome and Monte Cassino), settled at Sankt Maximin in Trier in 1006, and probably ended his career at Amorbach, where he died at some point after 1018. Along the way, Theoderic created multiple hagiographical texts for his hosts, having each time familiarized himself with local hagiographic traditions and historical memories, while also drafting Fleury's oldest customary.Footnote 51 One can easily imagine that someone with his profile, on arriving at Lure, would be drawn to Luxeuil. Without a doubt, Theoderic would have had contact with the other abbey and would have learned of Luxeuil's ongoing efforts to change its institutional fortunes and revive its intellectual and spiritual life. In the course of such contact, he could have first absorbed the monks’ then-current discourse of institutional and cultural renewal, and then been invited to assist them (as Adso did) in their efforts to co-create new texts that helped broadcast that narrative. As we shall see in the next section, the oldest manuscript of the Vita Deicoli makes this connection even more plausible.
Neo-Columbanian Networking and Its Limits
Even if we were to find that the Vita Deicoli or even the Vita Waldeberti were written without any direct involvement from the Luxeuil monks, we know that they took a keen interest in these narratives and acquired copies very soon after their completion. We know too that the members of this community were also quick to insert these vitae into a Luxovian collection of old and new hagiographies that celebrated both the abbey's venerable origins as a foundation of Columbanus, and the saint's legacy as the originator of several lineages of charismatic monastic leaders at Luxeuil and other places. Our key witness to this effort is the above-mentioned London manuscript. British Library, Add. 21917, which in all likelihood was made in the early eleventh century for use at Luxeuil, is a composite of two distinct codicological units.Footnote 52 The first of these (fols. 6–71) brings together Jonas of Bobbio's Vita Columbani and his Life of Luxeuil's second abbot, Eustace; Adso's Vita Waldeberti; a Life of Philibert, Columbanus's disciple and the first abbot of Jumièges; a Life of the fourth-century Bishop Taurin of Evreux by the monks of Fécamp, a foundation by Columbanus's follower Audoenus; and finally also the Vita Deicoli.Footnote 53 The second codicological unit comprises a miscellaneous collection of Passions and Lives that are unrelated to the Columbanian hagiographic tradition.
The former small assemblage of texts lends credence to the hypothesis that the Luxeuil monks were putting efforts into renewing a Columbanian hagiographic tradition. In all likelihood this renewal was designed to do three things: first, to make a statement about Luxeuil as Columbanus's principal foundation and support the abbots’ ongoing efforts to regain some of its former prestige as a major institutional and spiritual center; second, to argue that Columbanus's disciples and followers had perpetuated his charismatic legacy after his departure from Luxeuil and, ultimately, his death; and third, to suggest that the institutions that were implicated in this charismatic legacy (either as Columbanus's own foundations or as those of his followers) remained part of an imagined community of Columbanian institutions that was centered on Luxeuil abbey. But instead of rewriting older texts such as Jonas's Vita Columbani (which would have been a problematic tactic given the venerable status of that text and the fact that it was widely disseminated at the time), or creating new narratives of their own, they achieved their objective by bringing together in one collection old and new narratives that revealed the existence, in different parts of Burgundy and West Francia, of communities that kept alive the legacy of Columbanus and his followers.Footnote 54
The result, even though the BL manuscript is incomplete at the beginning and the end, shows us that the Luxeuil monks were open to the idea of exchanging (and in some cases possibly even co-creating) hagiographies with authors working at other institutions, as a means of fostering a sense of shared Luxeuil-centered historical and cultic identity. It brings to mind hagiographical efforts at late tenth- and (especially) early eleventh-century Cluny to promote the notion of a charismatic genealogy of monastic leaders there and foster a sense of shared identity between Cluniac institutions.Footnote 55 And it also reminds us of a contemporary trend to retool existing links between monastic institutions and establish new ones, in order to facilitate the exchange of people, know-how and other resources, and in some cases even restructure the governance of multiple institutions at the same time.Footnote 56 The exchange of hagiographical narratives and manuscripts played an important part in setting in place these institutional connections, the nature and implications of which differed from one institution to the next. Except for the likely indications of Lure and Luxeuil's converging destiny in the first half of the eleventh century, we remain in the dark about the intended scope of this Luxovian network and about its operational implications. But we can say with confidence that the London manuscript reflects the networking ambitions of Luxeuil's leadership at the time and that some communities in West Francia and Burgundy had apparently responded to these ambitions positively.
The notion of (in)formal networking through the compiling and copying of Columbanian hagiographies is not speculative. We can tell this because the attempt of the Luxeuil monks to renew Columbanian tradition coincided with a contemporary eastern effort in which the abbeys of St. Gall and Reichenau played a prominent part, producing new texts, assembling manuscript collections, and disseminating them in various parts of the Empire.Footnote 57 In the final quarter of the tenth century, scribes at Reichenau emblematized the resulting cultic and institutional connections by producing a manuscript that comprised Jonas's Life of Columbanus, Walahfrid Strabo's Life of Gallus, a Life of Otmar of St. Gall, and a ninth-century Vita Tripartita dedicated to Omer of Saint-Bertin in Flanders.Footnote 58 The inclusion of this latter text is important, for it pertains to an institution that was technically part of West Frankish territory but had strong ties to the Empire. Saint-Bertin had been involved in a confraternity agreement with St. Gall since the late ninth century, and in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries, imperial agents were intensely involved in the abbey's administration and patronage.Footnote 59 These connections had an impact on local hagiographical tradition, which celebrated St. Omer's putative links to an eastern or Sangallian branch of Columbanian monasticism (the result of confusing him with the eighth-century St. Gall abbot, Otmar) and which fed back into the Reichenau collection.Footnote 60
Yet the houses whose cultic traditions are represented in these western and eastern collections did not view the associated imagined communities as the only space in which they established contacts and mutually beneficial links with other monasteries. For instance, Saint-Bertin was also implicated in institutional and personal networks that reached deep into West Francia, including with representatives of the above-mentioned Luxovian movement. A passage in Adso's Vita Maldeberti alludes to properties owned by the abbey in the region of Saint-Bertin, which tells us that the Luxeuil monks remembered their early medieval connection to the coastal region of Flanders.Footnote 61 Furthermore, we have reason to suspect that the late tenth-century monks of Luxeuil established a direct connection with Saint-Bertin. Around this time an astronomical manuscript made at Saint-Bertin ended up in the Alsace region, possibly as part of an exchange of manuscripts between the two institutions.Footnote 62 And a few decades later, a rewritten hagiographical tradition emerged at Saint-Bertin that mistakenly claimed that its patron, like Omer, had been a disciple of Eustace's at Luxeuil.Footnote 63 Yet another testimony to how western and eastern Columbanian traditions were blended at the Flemish abbey is a later eleventh-century manuscript that is now preserved at the Royal Library in The Hague.Footnote 64 Charles Mériaux recently highlighted the East Frankish focus of the collection, which he inferred from the fact that it contains extracts from Jonas's Life of Eustace, Jonas's Lives of Columbanus and Abbot Attalla of Bobbio, a Life of Abbot Bertulf of Bobbio, as well as hagiographies relating to locally venerated saints Bertulf, Gerulf, and Bertuin. However, the volume also holds a Life of the Irish saint Burgundofara, a follower of Eustace of Luxeuil who founded the double monastery of Faremoutiers and allegedly subjected its inmates to Columbanus's Rule. Also present in the Saint-Bertin manuscript is Adso's text on Maldebert. This shows that the collection's compilers had been looking to latch onto a western strand of Columbanian hagiographical renewal as well.Footnote 65
Even at Luxeuil itself, abbots were reluctant to bet on one horse when it came to establishing mutually beneficial links with other monastic institutions. We already heard about property trades between Luxeuil and the Burgundian abbey of Cluny. And if we look to Lotharingia in the north, there is plenty of evidence of connections with institutions in that region too. Adso's career at Saint-Evre in Toul as a schoolmaster and then as a monk and later abbot of Montier-en-Der (which at the time was subject to the bishop of Toul); his links as a hagiographer to the abbeys of Saint-Mansuy (in the diocese of Toul) and Saint-Basle (in Reims); his correspondence with highly placed intellectuals and political figures such as Abbo of Fleury, Richer of Saint-Remi, Archbishop Adalbero of Reims, and (via Adalbero) Gerbert of Aurillac: all these connections must have given special significance to his interactions with his former community at Luxeuil.Footnote 66 Meanwhile, some of the scribes who worked on the London codex wrote in a style reminiscent of contemporary manuscripts from Metz, more specifically from the abbey of Saint-Symphorien.Footnote 67 Other connections and influences reached further east. When the mid-eleventh-century Abbot Gerard of Luxeuil commissioned an evangeliary for donation to the local church of Saint-Peter, the end product likewise featured a script that again resembled the Metz style, as well as decoration that reminded the French codicologist Jean Vezin of the famous school of Echternach.Footnote 68 Furthermore, Luxeuil had been in a prayer fraternity with the abbey of Reichenau since the ninth century.Footnote 69
The creation and dissemination of hagiographies and hagiographical collections allowed monastic groups that saw themselves as (co-)custodians of a charismatic founder's legacy to foster sentiments of historical interconnectedness with other communities. But the resulting links were hardly exclusive, as they routinely overlapped and sometimes even competed with ones that derived from other personal, institutional, and ideological connections. And they also did not determine the participating communities’ outlook on monastic identity and practice. In this sense too the Vita Deicoli is precious to us. It shows an author who is eager to tell his readers that the Luxeuil and Lure monks did not feel limited by a shared Columbanian past and that the attitudes and self-understanding of these communities and their leadership aligns with the most prominent and influential of his era's so-called reform monasteries.
Selective Visions of Institutional and Spiritual Renewal
We have already seen that in the second prologue of the Vita Deicoli, Theoderic mentions not only Luxeuil as prominent monastic center, but also the abbeys of Fleury and Sankt Maximin in Trier. Fleury had been reformed by Odo of Cluny in 930 and subsequently became a center from which monks were recruited to assist in various interventions in monasteries of the wider region.Footnote 70 Theoderic celebrates its achievement as a spiritual community and a moral point of reference, by describing it as “a spiritual school for monks and an invincible and always open asylum for the miserable.” And he also alludes to adversities that continuously beset the defiant community, stating that the monks “reject the world and its desires” while “steadfastly break(ing) a wedge in the devil's battle line.”Footnote 71 Since its own reform in 934 under the auspices of Duke Giselbert of Lotharingia, Sankt Maximin had enjoyed a similar reputation for spiritual excellence. And it had likewise played a similar role as a recruitment center for abbots and other so-called reform agents.Footnote 72 Theoderic undoubtedly refers to those two things when he praises the abbey as a “mirror for monks” (specular monachorum).Footnote 73
One likely reason why Theoderic chose to single out these two institutions is that he wanted to make a record of his own personal beacons of monasticism and possibly even indicate where his ambitions lay for his future career as a monk and an author. As we know, in the 980s or early 990s Theoderic, then a cleric, moved to Fleury and made profession there. And we also saw that he ended up at a prominent institution in Trier (albeit not at Sankt Maximin) after spending several years as a wandering author in 1002–5.Footnote 74 But Theoderic surely also mentioned these two places in order to conjure a double agenda for institutional and spiritual renewal that was eminently relevant to Luxeuil and Lure's situation at the time of writing. This situation was in part formed by the determination of charismatic abbots to pursue aggressively the restoration of monastic properties, to defend the privileges of their institutions, and to ward off unwanted secular interference. More specifically, there is little doubt that the above-quoted passage about Fleury refers to Abbot Abbo (988–1004) or his predecessor's defence of his institution's estates and rights. But we must also take into account the leading role some monasteries played in disseminating a specific understanding of ascetic identity and practice, and in creating links between communities that adhered to that understanding across institutional boundaries: the choice to include Sankt Maximin in representing those principles was definitely an apt one.Footnote 75 As such, the references to both Fleury and Sankt Maximin were a seamless (if implicitly stated) fit with the Vita Deicoli's institutional and Luxovian discourses discussed earlier in this article.
While these references seem clear enough, we may wonder why the second prologue makes no mention of other major monastic centres, particularly the abbey of Cluny. Its strand of monastic administration and spirituality was well represented in the Alsace region with the abbeys of Baume and Gigny.Footnote 76 Furthermore, Luxeuil's abbots (as we have already seen) had recently witnessed the Burgundian abbey's proprietal policies firsthand and undoubtedly knew about its rising prestige as a religious center. But Werdolph and especially his colleagues at Luxeuil may have resented Cluniac monasticism's success and stellar reputation, which came to the expense of a number of prominent Carolingian houses.Footnote 77 Presumably they were also eager to keep the Cluniacs at arm's length, given Abbot Maiolus's ongoing efforts to incorporate other monastic houses within his abbatial lordship.Footnote 78 And conceivably they were careful not to let overt references to Cluniac liberties and abbatial leadership deteriorate a fragile relationship with Alsace's aristocratic and clerical elites.
But in addition to these institutional concerns, we may also detect a tendency to reject the Cluniacs’ view on Benedictine spirituality and practice. At the beginning of this study, we saw how Theoderic in the Vita Deicoli stated that Columbanus had founded Luxeuil abbey after “having put on the cuculla and not the cucullus.”Footnote 79 The cuculla was a cowl with a hood attached to it, whereas the cucullus was a combination of a hooded garment worn with a separate cowl. While the former had been prescribed by the early ninth-century reformer Benedict of Aniane (d. 821) and remained widely in use into the eleventh century, a number of monastic communities (including Cluny) over time took to wearing the separated version.Footnote 80 Late tenth- and early eleventh-century authors, including at Saint-Remi in Reims, St. Gall, and (as we see here) Lure, used monastic clothing as a metaphor to express their adherence to Benedict of Aniane's views on Benedictine spirituality and their rejection of experiments with monastic organization, liturgical practices, and observance.Footnote 81 While none of these commentaries were explicitly directed at the Cluniacs, it is quite obvious that they were designed to promote a specific view of the authority of the Rule of St. Benedict. This included the need to observe certain aspects of the Carolingian reformers’ reading of the Rule, and to reject what was seen as undue innovation.
This arguably conservative outlook on monastic spirituality and practice brings us to a second omission of a prominent reform institution, namely the abbey of Gorze in the diocese of Metz. In the traditional view of scholars, tenth-century Gorze was the institutional and ideological epicenter of a Lotharingian reform movement that closely aligned its ideal of the monastic life with that of the Carolingian reformers.Footnote 82 Recent studies have nuanced this classic perception of the abbey as a major reform center, which makes it easier to understand why Theoderic chose not Gorze, but the more influential abbeys of Fleury and Sankt Maximin to represent principles of institutional and spiritual renewal.Footnote 83 Nonetheless, the absence of any reference to Gorze in the Vita Deicoli is still notable for a number of reasons. To begin with, in the second prologue, Theoderic dwells longer on the Metz diocese's cultic identity than on that of any other episcopal center. It is also quite likely that he was familiar with a number of Gorze-influenced literary traditions from the third quarter of the tenth century. Apart from the ideological matches discussed in the next section of this study, in one of just a handful of references to Irish hagiographic traditions the Vita contains a passage where the saint hangs his mantle on a sunbeam. This rarely encountered narrative motif is also featured in the Life of Caddroë (which was likely written at Metz in the 980s and which the anonymous author dedicated to Abbot Immo of Gorze), and its presence in Theoderic's work may link the creation of the Vita Deicoli to a Gorzian milieu.Footnote 84 The inspiration for it came from a hagiographic tradition about the Irish St. Brigida, who at the time was a popular figure of veneration in the area. At this point the diocese of Metz had three churches dedicated in her honor, one of which was actually owned by Gorze abbey.Footnote 85 Although this has to remain pure speculation, Theoderic's familiarity with the region and its literary traditions (and, it may be noted, his interest in Irish saints) may indicate that prior to coming to Lure he had spent time in the Metz area, possibly working as a priest at one of these three sanctuaries.
Furthermore, in addition to these possible connections between Theoderic and the Metz area, we also know that there existed strong links between the abbeys of Luxeuil and Gorze. At least one monk from Luxeuil became a member of Gorze in the 940s or early 950s, and subsequently was sent to Rome to assist with the transformation into a Benedictine monastery of the canonical house of San Paolo fuori le Mura.Footnote 86 And more generally speaking, Luxeuil also had an institutional connection to the diocese of Metz, where the local bishop Adalbero (929–62) had staged a series of interventions in religious communities, imposing strict observance of the Rule of St. Benedict, appointing a regular leadership, and reorganizing (and to an extent restoring) estates.Footnote 87 In particular, his involvement in the 934 transformation of Gorze into a Benedictine monastery was vividly remembered.Footnote 88 But also remembered were Adalbero's ruthless actions against religious men and women who resisted his reform policies, and the battles he and the monks of Gorze fought over his reluctance to return lost estates.Footnote 89 The Vita Deicoli actually mentions the prelate as one of two clerical leaders who harassed Baltramn's monks at Alanesberg with undue demands prior to their transferral to Lure.Footnote 90 And while Theoderic might have known about and admired John of Gorze's defiant stance against Adalbero, later in the century bishops at Metz remained as determined as their predecessor to protect their vested interests.Footnote 91 Furthermore, Abbots Odalbert (976–82) and Immo (982–ca. 1015) were unable to maintain the abbey's stellar renown, and Immo's leadership decisions appear to have caused controversy and further damage to the abbey's reputation.Footnote 92
Conceivably Theoderic had witnessed or heard about some of these developments and was disappointed with the observance of the Gorze monks, the conduct of their leaders and their clerical lords, and maybe even at how his personal relationship with the institution had played out. Whatever the exact reason, as a potential exemplar of reformed governance and spirituality, Gorze's status and reputation were apparently too compromised to justify an explicit mention in the Vita. Yet, as we shall see in the next section, this did not prevent Theoderic from echoing literary representations of monastic identity and practice as we find them in the written output of that institution and of related houses in the area.
Columbanian Monasticism's Benedictine Afterlife
In the passage about Columbanus's dress style, Theoderic gave a subtle but clearly discernable hint to his readers that the saint's account of monastic practice and spirituality came second to that of St. Benedict.Footnote 93 He also indicated that despite their self-assigned role as co-custodians of the legacy of Columbanus and his followers, the monks of Lure and Luxeuil aligned with the views of a conservative strand in contemporary religious life. Theoderic's account of Luxeuil's founder as a monk who followed the precepts of Carolingian lawmakers on monastic dress is matched by several emphatic references to the figure of St. Benedict (as patrem atque monarcham) and to the Rule of St. Benedict.Footnote 94 And like the Rule, the Vita conceptualizes conversion to the monastic life as an act of penance that transforms the individual's inner self and outer appearance.Footnote 95 Its principal characters excel because of their determination to put up inner ramparts against “secular filth” and temptations, in particular caused by the polluting presence of women.Footnote 96 When the lay nobleman who owned Lure sends out one of his aides to castrate Deicolus as punishment for invading his estate, the saint expresses his joy at the prospect of being freed from sexual temptation: this attitude would subsequently allow him to reveal his saintly powers during an interaction with the late nobleman's widow.Footnote 97 His disciple and successor Columbinus avoids the company of women even after death, miraculously repelling one from his grave site, “since monks have the habit of declining to converse with women.”Footnote 98 Moreover, Abbot Werdolph is twice characterized as coelibatus.Footnote 99 Presumably this last comment is an allusion to his many interactions as an institutional leader with the secular world and with individuals who pursued an ascetic lifestyle outside of the cloister.
At the same time, Theoderic's view on the need for physical ramparts between the secular and the religious is notably nuanced. Grounded in the vow of stability, life in the cloister is described as a “paradise of monks . . . a divine school of service” and a place removed from worldly distractions.Footnote 100 But entering that unpolluted space is not a guarantee of inner peace. Once he has become the leader of a consolidated institution, Deicolus longs for a hermit's life because it allows him to trade Martha (the active life) for Mary (a contemplative life), and pursue “a more hidden and a stricter existence.”Footnote 101 Nor is the enclosed environment of the cloister necessarily the key to the monastic propositum. Although a monk in the Benedictine tradition, Deicolus is quoted as saying: “I am a peregrinus and I live the monastic life.”Footnote 102 And his distant successor Baltramn is viewed by his contemporaries as an ideal candidate to become leader of a re-founded Lure abbey precisely because of his achievement as a hermit.Footnote 103 Even the laymen Hugo and his sons return to live in their homes following their conversion, after having made the appropriate vows and having received the key outward markers (the tonsure and the habit) of their new purpose in life.Footnote 104
These statements about the authority of the Rule of St. Benedict and about permeable boundaries between monastic and other religious lifestyles echo key arguments in texts that were either intensively studied or written in prominent religious centers of Upper Lotharingia, particularly in the Metz region. One such commentary is Grimlaicus's Regula solitariorum, an adaptation of the Rule of St. Benedict in which the author insists on the notion that anchorites ought to follow Benedict's precepts.Footnote 105 Another is the Life of St Arnoul composed in the 970s or early 980s by an anonymous monk of Saint-Arnoul in Metz, which emphasizes that the saint “took the monastic habit as a hermit.”Footnote 106 And yet another is Adso's Vita Basoli. This too addresses themes of adult conversion, the relationship between the cenobitical and eremitical life, the need to strictly observe the Rule of St. Benedict, pollution of monastic space, restoration of monastic properties and renewal of virtues, and finally also conflicts with secular agents.Footnote 107 But none of these nor any other known commentaries show such startling matches with the Vita Deicoli as John of Saint-Arnoul's 970s–980s Life of John of Gorze.Footnote 108 Both texts address prominently and in very similar ways a range of themes, offering together a conservative interpretation of Benedictine tradition along the lines of Benedict of Aniane's vision.Footnote 109 They examine the risk of the pollution of monastic space and its inhabitants, paying particular attention to the danger of interacting with (unveiled) women and offering a positive comment on the putative consequences of castration.Footnote 110 Both also explore the theme of adult conversion, while focusing on aligning the outward appearance of monks with the requirements of an inward religious vocation.Footnote 111
The most striking resemblance, however, lies in the two authors’ portrayal of how and by whom the monastic propositum can be pursued. While both texts celebrate stabilitas as a virtue, and while they also indicate that the cloister offers a safe haven from worldly interference, at the same time they also state that the monastic life can be pursued in many different ways. Both vitae are preoccupied with describing a variety of ascetic pursuits and decline to rigidly distinguish between eremitical, canonical, and cenobitical lifestyles, as long as such lifestyles are communal and regulated.Footnote 112 Both the Vita Deicoli and the Vita Johannis also depict people who move back and forth between these lifestyles, as if to indicate that an individual's spiritual journey can take them to different religious destinations over the course of a lifetime as they move between active engagement and contemplation.Footnote 113 And the two texts also acknowledge the legitimacy of an open spiritual environment where vowed household ascetics, monks living in a cloistered setting, and hermits can all pursue the same fundamental ideals based on the Rule of St. Benedict.Footnote 114
This raises the question of whether the Vita Deicoli represents a Gorzian view of monastic identity and practice.Footnote 115 Not necessarily, I would argue. The discourse in the Vita Johannis is so distinct from the majority of contemporary commentaries that it is difficult for us to judge how typically Gorzian John of Saint-Arnoul's outlook was, or even how individually personal. And it is also important to realize that we do not know if the views and practices that are described in the Vita Johannis and in other cited texts reflect then-current attitudes at the Metz abbey and its associated community, or whether they were intended as a record of those held by an earlier generation of monastics. Far more relevant than finding an answer to the question of whether Theoderic aligned his argument with then-current Gorzian ideas is the observation that the Vita Deicoli represents an attempt to reconcile a Columbanian legacy as celebrated at late tenth-century Luxeuil and Lure with a complex understanding of Benedictine identity as we find it addressed in late tenth-century narratives from Upper Lotharingia. That message surely must have been obvious to contemporary readers, but we can also understand why later audiences of the Vita, including modern observers, might have struggled to decipher it.
In conclusion, Theoderic's Vita Deicoli emerges as an ambitious hagiographic attempt to address multiple concerns and discourses in late tenth-century monasticism. The first and so far best-understood of these was the Lure monks’ focus on grounding their institution's exceptional situation in a legitimizing seventh-century past and on managing the fragile relationship with the former lay proprietors of their estate. But as I hope to have shown, alongside that local focus we can discern three further arguments about then-current trends in monastic networking, institutional and spiritual renewal, and ascetic identity and practice. Regarding the first, monastic networking, the second prologue and the London codex help us to substantiate the hypothesis that the Vita was conceived as part of a broader project of hagiographic co-creation. The aim of that project, I argue, was to establish a Luxeuil-centered imagined community of abbeys that self-identified as custodians of the Columbanian legacy in the French-speaking part of the Latin West. But the Vita also bears witness to a trend where monastic groups resisted the idea that membership of this Luxovian community was strictly exclusive. Instead they persisted in forging other institutional connections and declined to define their identity as a spiritual cohort solely in terms of this Columbanian legacy. Theoderic makes this point by referring to Fleury and Sankt Maximin in Trier in order to suggest contemporary strategies of institutional renewal by the abbots of Lure and Luxeuil. And he also tailors his account of monastic identity and practice to echo then-current thinking about these issues, particularly in a milieu of conservatively thinking authors from the wider Metz area. As such, the Vita should be regarded as a warning against defining monastic identities around the year 1000 in terms of mutually exclusive networks and reform movements. Rather, it is an invitation to adopt a more flexible perspective where multiple overlapping institutional connections, personal links, and ideological influences uniquely shaped the self-understanding of each religious community.
