Wormald. Bede and Benedict Biscop. Additional note.
Bede and Benedict Biscop.
Additional Note
The original version of this paper was rightly criticized for grossly overloaded annotation, both by my then teacher, MichaelWallace-Hadrill, and subsequently by Professor Goffart, ‘Bede and the Ghost of Bishop Wilfrid’, p. 315; there is correspondingly little to be said for seriously expanding the range of reference here, multiply enriching as subsequent contributions have been. Some advances cannot, however, be overlooked (though those noted here will tend to be confined to works in English, not least because I am less familiar with the continental literature in this field than I aimed to have been thirty years ago).
1 The development of monastic ideas and legislation: Peter Brown’s miles-deep intellectual fertility has of course continued to bear unrivalled harvests. To be singled out as regards the argument presented here is, perhaps (and title notwithstanding), Relics and Social Status in the Age of Gregory of Tours (Stenton Lecture 10, Reading, 1977), reprinted in his Society and the Holy (cf. n. 7, above), pp. 222–50. Meanwhile, Philip Rousseau continued to develop his insights and ours: ‘Cassian, Contemplation and the Coenobitic Life’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History XXVI (1975), pp. 113–26; and Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, Calif., 1985); while Sister Benedicta Ward has translated The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Cistercian Studies 59, rev. edn, 1984), and introduced N. Russell (trans.), The Lives of the Desert Fathers (Cistercian Studies 34, 1981).
2 The issue of the Rules of Benedict and ‘The Master’ has been strikingly reopened by my one-time Glasgow colleague, Dr Marilyn Dunn, ‘Mastering Benedict: Monastic rules and their authors in the early medieval West’, EHR CV (1990), pp. 567–94; with Dom de Vogüé’s ‘Reply’, and her own ‘Rejoinder’, ibid. CVII (1992), pp. 95–111; and finally her book, itself a major contribution to the overall scenario, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2000), especially chapters 5–6 (NB pp. 128–9). My own sense remains much as it was in n. 26 above: viz. that the issue is unresolved, and in all likelihood, given the abiding fluidity of monastic legislation into the seventh century, ultimately irresolvable; but that the very persistence of the controversy makes (as is so often the case) a point of equal, conceivably greater, importance: that the monastic cultures of meridional Gaul and suburbicarian Italy were very closely interlinked in St Benedict’s time, if not later. But my reading of Columbanus’ own Rule, and still more of its Frankish offshoots (above, nn. 11, 21, 30, as well as 26) inclines me to doubt whether any ‘Hiberno-Germanic’ connection had much to do with the genesis of ‘The Master’.
3 The picture of early Frankish monasticism that I had derived from Professors Riché and Prinz has been modified in very significant respects, above all by Professor Ian Wood. These modifications are effectively summarized in his The Merovingian Kingdoms (London, 1994), especially chapter 11; but see in particular his ‘breakthrough’ study, ‘A prelude to Columbanus: the monastic achievement in the Burgundian territories’, in H. B. Clarke and M. Brennan (eds), Columbanus and Merovingian Monasticism (British Archaeological Reports, International Series 113, Oxford, 1981), pp. 3–32. In addition, there is now an important collection, M. Lapidge (ed.), Columbanus: Studies on the Latin Writings (Studies in Celtic History, Woodbridge, 1997), opening with a characteristic essay by Professor Donald Bullough on ‘The career of Columbanus’, pp. 1–28. On Professor Prinz’s view of the gulf between Provenc¸al/Caesarian and Loire/Martinian monasticism, see C. Leyser, Authority and Asceticism from Augustine to Gregory the Great (Oxford, 2000); together with two valuable Caesarian studies by W. E. Klingshirn, Caesarius of Arles: The Making of a Christian Community in Late Antique Gaul (Cambridge, 1993); and (translation, with notes and introduction), Caesarius of Arles: Life, Testament, Letters (Translated Texts for Historians 19, Liverpool, 1994). With regard to the comment in n. 31, that the RB begins to appear solo as early as the ‘Leodgar canons’ in the ‘Vetus Gallica’, one should note the good case put up by the late Professor Ullmann, when – otherwise most warmly – reviewing (EHR XCII (1977), pp. 359–64) Professor Mordek’s great edition, Kirchenrecht und Reform im Frankenreich: Die Collectio Vetus Gallica, die älteste systematischer Kanonessammlung des fränkischen Gallien. Studien und Edition (Berlin, 1975), that the ‘canons’ are in fact a later interpolation.
4 Other aspects of Professor Prinz’s encapsulation of the later Merovingian monastic scene, especially (e.g.) the figure of St Audoin, are reconsidered by R. A. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum (Oxford, 1987), chapter V, and by P. Fouracre and R. A. Gerberding, Late Merovingian France. History and Hagiography, 640–720 (Manchester Medieval Sources, 1996), pp. 13–18, 20–1, with items II, III (esp. its introduction, pp. 133–52) and VII.
5 Professor Wallace-Hadrill further expanded his view of Romano-Merovingian links in The Frankish Church (Oxford History of the Christian Church, general editors H. and O. Chadwick, 1983), chapter 7; but it has been variously qualified byWood, Merovingian Kingdoms, pp. 243–6, and T. Reuter, ‘St Boniface and Europe’ in Reuter (ed.), ‘The Greatest Englishman’. Essays on St Boniface and the Church at Crediton (Exeter, 1980), pp. 71–94.
6 Traditional (quasi-confessional?) orthodoxies as regards early papal charters of monastic exemption were finally turned on their head between the composition and publication of this paper by H. H. Anton, Studien zu den Klosterprivilegien der Päpste im frühen Mittelalter (Beiträge zur Geschichte und Quellenkunde des Mittelalters 4, Berlin, 1975), establishing that some of the least promising texts are substantially authentic. As a consequence, only the more steamingly concocted of these documents can now be brushed aside – so underpinning the position more tentatively adopted by Professor Ewig (n. 59, above).
7 Amidst much else of inestimable value for later Merovingian history, H. Atsma (ed.), La Neustrie. Les pays au nord de la Loire de 650 à 850 (2 vols, Sigmaringen, 1989) contains papers on Corbie and early Merovingian learning by D. Ganz, ‘Corbie and Neustrian monastic culture 661–849’, and by R. McKitterick, ‘The diffusion of insular culture in Neustria between 650 and 850: the implications of the manuscript evidence’, II, pp. 339–47, 395–432; see also the associated papers by Professors Riché and Vezin, pp. 297–318.
8 Since the publication of D. P. Kirby, ‘Bede, Eddius Stephanus and the Life of St Wilfrid’, EHR XCVIII (1983), pp. 101–14, it has become good practice to question the identification of ‘Stephen the priest’, self-proclaimed author of the ‘Vita Wilfridi’ (Preface, p. 193) in both MSS – there is, incidentally, no doubt that the ‘Fell’ and Salisbury MSS are the same, B. Colgrave (ed. and trans.), The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus (Cambridge, 1927), pp. xiv–xv, but the story of the Fell MS’s return to Salisbury after three centuries must await another occasion – with ‘Æddi cognomento Stephanus’, the Kentish choirmaster invited north by Wilfrid in or soon after 669 (HE, iv 2, p. 205, cf. Vit. Wilf. xiv, with xlvii, pp. 209, 241–3, and above, n. 28). That position is certainly defensible but not conclusive; I still incline to the implications of Professor Wallace-Hadrill’s note, Historical Commentary, p. 139: ‘However, it is a Stephanus who is . . . summoned by Wilfrid from Kent, and it is a Stephanus who writes Wilfrid’s Vita.’ Accordingly, I have seen no compelling reason to change the above text’s and notes’ traditional attribution of the work to ‘Eddius’.
9 On the cult of King Oswald and its significance, see C. Stancliffe and E. Cambridge (eds), Oswald. Northumbrian King to European Saint (PaulWatkins Medieval Studies 20, Stamford, 1995), esp. (e.g.) the paper by Dr Thacker; and V. Gunn, ‘Bede and the Martyrdom of St Oswald’, in D. Wood (ed.), Martyrs and Martyrologies (Studies in Church History XXX, 1993), pp. 57–66.
10 Professor Charles-Edwards’ reading of Irish and other ‘peregrinationes’ were subsequently published: T. M. Charles-Edwards, ‘The Social Background to Irish Peregrinatio’, Celtica 9: Studies in Memory of Myles Dillon (1976), pp. 43–59.
11 For many of these themes, see also I. Wood, The Most Holy Abbot Ceolfrid (Jarrow Lecture, 1995).