Posts Tagged ‘Germany’

Inventing paganism in eighth-century Bavaria

By Jonathan Couser

Early Medieval Europe, Vol18:1 (2010)

Abstract: This article examines the hagiographies of Saints Emmeram and Corbinian and the synod of Neuching from eighth-century Bavaria. It argues that the references to pagan survivals in these texts are misleading, in the absence of other evidence of paganism in the region. Rather, since these texts were composed in a narrow window of time from 769–774, this anxiety reflects concerns aroused by pagan uprisings in neighbouring Carantania, which were only suppressed in 772. Thus, the texts’ authors ‘invented’ paganism in their own culture as their perceptions of the dividing lines between Christianity and paganism grew sharper.

Introduction: Our vision of the Christianization of medieval Europe has changed drastically over the last generation. It was once possible to see early medieval Germany as a land of virgin paganism, into which missionaries like Amandus, Willibrord and Boniface boldly brought an alien Christian gospel. This vision was framed in terms derived from the missionary movements of western Christendom in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Recent scholarship has made this image untenable. The work of Lutz von Padberg, for instance, has stressed the cultural similarities between Christian and non-Christian peoples of Europe, which made possible the incorporation of the latter into Christendom. Ian Wood’s study of the hagiographies of missionary figures, our main sources of information on Christianization, has shown the extent to which these accounts are literary constructions, used by Christians to discuss missionary agendas, rather than direct reflections of actual activities. Archaeology and careful analysis of the written sources have shown evidence of the presence of Christianity in many ‘mission fields’ long pre-dating the arrival of missionaries themselves. Personalities like Columbanus or Boniface, once presented as exemplary early medieval missionaries, now appear more like ‘reformers’ and ‘consolidators’ of existing Christian communities.

Early medieval Bavaria is a striking example of the shift from narratives of mission and conversion to those of reform and organization. Scholarly opinion up to the mid-twentieth century generally thought that Christianity virtually disappeared from the former Roman provinces of Rhaetia and Noricum in the sixth and seventh centuries. Post-war historians, however, particularly following the lead of Friedrich Prinz, moved toward seeing a strong continuity of Christianity in the area. Thus, Bavaria’s re-entry into European Christendom in the eighth century now seems like a process of reorganization and reform rather than of mission and conversion.

The continuity paradigm has carried the field, but it leaves a lingering question: what to make of those sources which older scholarship took as evidence of paganism? If there was no great mission converting the Bavarians to Christianity, why did Bavarian authors sometimes write as though there had been? These sources betray an anxiety on the part of the Bavarian Christian leadership of the eighth century that their people had been entangled in actual paganism in the recent past, and that some current practices might still be tainted by demonic influences. These texts do not, in fact, reflect memories of actual militant paganism in the region. Significantly, all of them were written within a narrow time frame, between 768 and 772. This article will argue that such sources indicate a shift in the mentalities of the Bavarian clergy, particularly expressed by Bishop Arbeo of Freising, as the clergy developed a missionary agenda and encountered setbacks in the pursuit of that agenda. These setbacks caused Arbeo and the other clergy to re-imagine their own past and thus to invent a pagan past for their own people.

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The Art of Reform in a Bavarian Nunnery Around 1000

By Adam S. Cohen

Speculum, Vol. 74, No. 4. (1999)

Introduction: That an efflorescence of visual art and architecture was a common feature of monastic reform in the Middle Ages has been well documented. Defining the precise nature of the relationship between that art and the reform that stimulated it has been less easy. Why should reform movements engender the production of art? What form does that art and architecture take? And how does it express or reflect the concerns and aims of monastic reformers? This essay will seek to address the last question in particular by examining a cluster of images and texts that are exceptionally clear in their expression of reform ideas. They were produced in Regensburg, in Bavaria, around the year 1000 for the newly reformed nunnery of Niedermunster. An investigation of this evidence not only indicates how art could be an integral feature of monastic reform but also reveals some of the strategies used by reformers to counter opposition.

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Frederick S. Paxton, a Professor of History at Connecticut College. The main focus of his research has been about how medieval people approached sickness, healing and mortality. In this latest book, Anchoress and Abbess in Ninth-century Saxony: The Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim, Paxton provides an edition and translation of hagiographic texts about two important women in the early Christian church in Saxony. We interviewed him by email:

1. How did you become interested in researching Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim?

In Christianizing Death (1990), I argued that Latin Christian death rituals began to take definitive form in the later ninth century. After finishing that book, I wondered if there were any contemporary narrative accounts that might confirm my findings. The Life of Hathumoda seemed a perfect test case. Unlike many hagiographical sources, it was written shortly after the death of its subject by someone who knew her well and was present when she died. And I was not disappointed. The ritual accompaniment to Hathumoda’s death played out just as I had expected. To my surprise, though, the text passed over the formal deathbed rituals in a rather perfunctory manner. Much more time was spent on the visions that Hathumoda experienced during her terminal illness, the emotional and spiritual responses of the women who tended her in her dying, and their struggle to come to terms with her death. There was a bigger story there and I wanted to get to the bottom of it. The Life of Liutbirga got added to the mix at the suggestion of Tom Noble, who thought that the two lives made a good pair because they were roughly contemporary and from the same region. Analyzing and contextualizing them together thus helped expand the research to Saxony as a whole and to the larger fields of women’s spirituality and the history of the family.

2. Although the three works you translate revolve around Liutbirga and Hathumoda, the texts also detail a number of other ninth-century Saxon women. How do these depictions of other women help to reveal Christian life in this period?

These texts really do stand out for their focus on women. Men appear, of course, but only in supporting roles. This is because Gisla figures primarily as a widow, and Liutbirga never married, and also because Liutbirga’s cell was in the church of a house of canonesses and Hathumoda was abbess of a similar community of cloistered women. They thus reveal arenas of female activity that do not often appear in early medieval sources, one secular and two religious: the management of aristocratic households and their dispersed estates, teaching and dispensing spiritual guidance to the laity (if at the price of ritual enclosure), and leading a newly established women’s community. And they do it with a great deal of narrative power, especially in the descriptions of Hathumoda’s visions and Liutbirga’s struggles with the devil, and with added doses of naturalism and psychological acuity in the extraordinary accounts of Liutbirga and the women who came to see her, or just happened to be passing by her cell.

3. You also talk about how ninth-century Saxony was only recently converted to Christianity, and that the Saxons were able to “fashion their understanding of Christianity in their own image.” How do your texts help reveal some of the unique aspects of Christianity in Saxony?

Gender relations in Saxony seem to have been more balanced than in other places in Europe and ordinary families, like Hathumoda’s and Liutbirga’s, seem to have played as much of a role in the process of Christianization as missionary bishops and Benedictine monks. Both Gandersheim and Wendhausen were family foundations built on family land. They were blessed by the clergy, but otherwise independent. Moreover, as much as monks like Agius of Corvey wanted all cloistered women to become nuns, aristocratic Saxon families preferred the more flexible status of canonesses, who took no permanent vows, could own property and could leave the cloister at will. At least in the first generation or two, the abbesses were daughters of the founding couple. Other women of the family also lived there: some their whole lives, some until they were married, and others after they were widowed, like Hathumoda’s mother Oda, who spent the last decades of her life at Gandersheim. The firm establishment of this particular way of life in the later ninth century led to its blossoming in Ottonian Germany, where abbesses, queens and canonesses played key roles in the religious, cultural and even political life of the Reich.

4. Finally, going back to my undergraduate days, I found that hagiographic texts could sometimes be difficult to understand and to teach. How would you go about teaching students at an undergraduate level the Lives of Liutbirga of Wendhausen and Hathumoda of Gandersheim?

You’re right about that. Saints’ lives, especially if they are filled with miracle stories and stock figures, often elicit reactions from students along the lines of “Why would anyone believe this stuff?” Others find the blend of natural and supernatural interesting and challenging, though, and that mixture is very evident in these texts. There are visions and miracles, but the principal characters are also recognizably human, even flawed. Hathumoda and Liutbirga are presented as holy women, but they are also shown struggling with their faith, and acting within the context of real families and institutions. This opens up unusual opportunities for teaching. I was surprised when creating the index for the volume to see how many entries there were on topics like childhood and children, daughters, families, friendship, nobles and nobility, servants and servitude, virgins and virginity, widows and widowhood. There is also a myriad of information on abbesses and abbeys, care of the sick, responses to death and dying, dreams and visions, and other forms of piety for students interested in early medieval religion. Finally, enough translations of primary texts from the ninth and even the tenth centuries are now readily available that students can use these texts together with related ones for pretty focused comparative research, even without proficiency in Latin.

We thank Professor Paxton for answering our questions.

Rashi’s Daughters Book Three: Rachel

By Maggie Anton

Publisher: Plume, 2009
ISBN: 9780452295681

Rachel is the youngest and most beautiful daughter of medieval Jewish scholar Salomon ben Isaac, or “Rashi.” Her father’s favorite and adored by her new husband, Eliezer, Rachel’s life looks to be one of peaceful scholarship, laughter, and love. But events beyond her control will soon threaten everything she holds dear. Marauders of the First Crusade massacre nearly the entire Jewish population of Germany , and her beloved father suffers a stroke. Eliezer wants their family to move to the safety of Spain , but Rachel is determined to stay in France and help her family save the Troyes yeshiva, the only remnant of the great centers of Jewish learning in Europe .

Maggie Anton Lecture on Rashi’s Daughters

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Places to Play:Topographies of Gender in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan

Sterling-Hellenbrand, Alexandra

Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 16 (1999)

Abstract

In the latter half of the twelfth century, the Arthurian romance made its entrance onto the stage of medieval vernacular literature and found an eager audience in German courtly culture. The works of Béroul and Chrétien de Troyes quickly (at least by medieval standards) found their way into German adpatations by Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg, among others. Intended for a secular and noble audience, these Arthurian romances celebrate the feudal court and its way of life, offering listeners an appropriate measure of both pleasure and usefulness1 in the idealized Arthurian mirror of their own society. Much recent research has been done on the “usefulness” of Arthurian romance as a vehicle for the socialization of its audience. This function certainly did not escape the medieval contemporaries of Chrétien, Wolfram and Gottfried. In his moral treatise Der wälsche Gast, written around 1215, the cleric Thomasin von Zerklære emphasizes the prescriptive values illustrated by the main actors in romance, casting the Arthurian characters as exempla for his readers and thereby allowing secular fiction to become an acceptable vehicle for moral teaching. In this way, Thomasin indicates that he believes the romance exceptionally well-suited for the education and socialization of noble women and men, superior even to other didactic literature of the time.

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Warriors, Wyrms, and Wyrd: The Paradoxical Fate of the Germanic Hero/King in Beowulf

Wanner, Kevin J.

Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 16 (1999)

Abstract

In the history of Beowulf criticism, the dragon episode has been subjected to wildly differing interpretations involving a wide set of elements, including character motivation, the symbolic significance of the dragon and its hoard, the degree of Christian revision of pagan source material, and, most importantly, the moral appraisal given to the title character’s actions and temperament. In general, it is agreed that Beowulf was produced by a Christian poet (however the role and identity of that person or persons may be defined) who utilized narrative sources that pre-dated the introduction of Christianity into Anglo-Saxon England. My purpose here is not to discern this Christian artist’s primary motivations or intended messages, both highly-contested matters, but rather to examine the dragon-fight’s symbolism, and by extension the motifs of dragons and dragon-slayers, in terms of what this inquiry may reveal about the sociopolitical ideologies of pre-Christian Germanic society. Accordingly, I will argue that Beowulf’s dragon-fight episode originated as an expression of a major contradiction inherent in pagan culture, an expression which was given shape through the vehicle of mythic narrative.

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The Hanging of Judas: Medieval Iconography and the German Peasants’ War

Sullivan, Lee R.

Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 15 (1998)

Abstract

Figure 1 is a reproduction of a painted glass panel depicting the hanging of Judas, currently found in the Art Institute of Chicago. In the panel we are shown the loosely robed, muscular corpse of Judas, hanging by a rope from a tree. His belly has been ruptured, and a bat-winged, speckled demon is extracting Judas’s soul, in the form of an infant, from amongst his entrails. In the background is a deserted landscape of rolling hills and sparse trees.

The panel is a specimen of a type of glass painting developed around 1500 in Switzerland, along the Rhine, and in the Netherlands. Glass painters used black, brown, and yellow stains to paint their subject matter on white glass. The outlines of the design were done in black enamel, and yellow stain in varying shades, derived from sulphide of silver, was used for the coloring. In the only other published article devoted to the panel Oswald Goetz suggests that it was created in Alsace or southern Germany between 1520 and 1530. Unfortunately, we have no information on the purpose or original context for which the panel was intended. We know neither who commissioned it nor who created it. Goetz notes that an independent representation of the hanging Judas was uncommon in the Middle Ages; usually the scene appeared as a subordinate episode in a Passion narrative. While it is possible that the Chicago panel was only one of a series of images (perhaps depicting the Passion), Goetz speculates that the panel, alone or with an accompanying inscription warning against despair, might have been intended for a church or a private chapel in the residence of a wealthy bürgher or noble.

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St Gertrude’s Synecdoche: The Problem of Writing the Sacred Heart

Jenkins, Eve B.

Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 14 (1997)

Abstract

St Gertrude was reluctant to acquiesce to the Lord’s demand that she write an account of her mystical experiences for others to read. “I thought it so unseemly,” she confesses, “to write down all these things that I could not bring myself to listen to the voice of conscience and kept on putting it off.” Yet , fortunately, her Legatus memorialis abundantiae divinae pietatis (The Herald of Divine Love in its usual English rendering) was written despite her reservations, and has survived. How did Gertrude manage to overcome her qualms? This paper proposes to explore the way in which deployment of one central symbol, that of the sacred heart of Christ, invests Gertrude with both the authority and the ability to write in seemly fashion about God.

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Separating the Living from the Dead:Wessel Gansfort and the Death of Purgatory

Koslofsky, Craig

Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 10 (1993)

Abstract

This paper explores criticism of the Roman church’s doctrine of Purgatory from the late fifteenth century through the early years of the German Reformation. Following the writings of the Frisian theologian Wessel Gansfort (c. 1410-1489), the Wittenberg theologians Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and Martin Luther initially sought to reform Purgatory rather than abolish it entirely. Ultimately, however, their attempts to fashion new doctrines on the last things resulted in the death of Purgatory in the Protestant tradition. The intellectual and cultural history of the death of Purgatory can, like the search for its origins, illustrate the complex intersection of doctrines and practices that made medieval Purgatory.

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King David in Germany:Royal Traditions at Prüm

Marquardt-Cherry, Janet T.

Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 9 (1992)

Abstract

Unlike Psalters, Tropers were not commonly furnished with images of King David. This was because the Tropers’ idiosyncratic texts drew from widely varied sources and could claim no such illustrious author. One manuscript, however, Paris B.N. fonds latin MS.9448, from the monastery of Prüm in western Germany, was illustrated with a striking double-image of King David during the Ottonian period, ca. 990-1001 (p. 48). As part of the miniature originally accompanying the third mass of Christmas, folio 4 represents King David as rex in the upper register and as author of the psalms, i.e., within his liturgical venue as sacerdos, in the lower register. Comparable to the Werden Psalter frontispiece, which has a similar two-tier composition, the Prüm scene is justified in a Troper by specific references to King David in the Introit tropes.

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