Doctor doctorum. Changing concepts of 'teaching' in the mortuary roll of Bruno the Carthusian († 1101)

To appear in 'Bruno the Carthusian († 1101) and his Mortuary Roll. Studies, Text and Translations, ed. by Hartmut Beyer, Gabriela Signori and Sita Steckel, currently under review - please cite only with my permission. Doctor doctorum. Changing Concepts of ‚Teaching’ in the Mortuary Roll of Bruno the Carthusian († 1101) Sita Steckel University of Münster Documenting the death of a man of considerable intellectual and religious calibre, the mortuary roll of Saint Bruno († 1101) is one of the most interesting commemorative mortuary rolls to have circulated in the high Middle Ages. Not only was Bruno mourned as the ‘father of hermits’, the founder of the budding order of the Carthusians. Many contemporaries would also have remembered his involvement in recent controversies – most importantly, a conflict with the simoniac Archbishop of Reims which inspired Bruno’s conversion to the religious life and caused him to lay down his office as a teacher at Reims. Various individuals, including many former students, also left commemorative entries and poems in the roll specifically celebrating Bruno’s long years as master of the Cathedral School.1 As a result, the roll is one of the longest and most varied examples extant from this period. Between the end of 1101 and autumn 1102, a messenger from Bruno’s southern Italian hermit community in La Torre carried the scroll through Italy, France and England. At least 145 churches and cloisters composed 178 entries (tituli), some of them very extensive. And there were probably still more on the original, which was destroyed in the sixteenth !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This chapter was translated by Miranda Stanyon, and I wish to thank her for her valuable work and helpful comments. Remaining mistakes and particularities of the text are due to my own last-minute editing of the text. 1 For an account of Bruno’s life, see the recent volumes Alain Girard, Daniel Le Blévec and Nathalie Nabert (Eds), Saint Bruno et sa posterité spirituelle. Actes du colloque international des 8 et 9 octobre 2001 à l'Institut catholique de Paris, Analecta Cartusiana, 189 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2003); Alain Girard, Daniel Le Blévec and Pierrette Paravy (Eds), Saint Bruno en Chartreuse. Journée d’études à l’Hôtellerie de la Grande Chartreuse le 3 octobre 2002, Analecta Cartusiana, 192 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2004); James Hogg, Servilio Bentancur and Stanislas Autore, Der Heilige Bruno, Analecta Cartusiana 214 (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2003). century.2 In accordance with contemporary practice, the authors of individual entries in part promised prayers and particular acts of commemoration for the departed. But they also celebrated Bruno in a series of laudatory descriptions in verse and prose.3 These poetic tituli tell us a number of things about perceptions of Bruno. They have been drawn on by research on high medieval memorials of the dead, as well as on Bruno and the Carthusians. Giles Constable, Sylvain Excoffon and others have used the rotulus to reconstruct a very detailed picture of Bruno.4 Nonetheless, one aspect of this picture – the subject of the following pages – seems to have received little discussion: although the founder and ‘father’ of the Carthusians is commemorated first and foremost as an exemplary religious reformer, several scholars have noted that his role as a teacher comes a close second.5 In France in particular, Bruno’s long service as a master at the Cathedral School of Reims (c. 1056–1079)6 was evidently well remembered. He appears in a great number of tituli as ‘magister’, and at times even as ‘philosophus’ and ‘doctor doctorum’. As a survey of Jean Dufour’s comprehensive edition of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 On the practice of circulating mortuary rolls dedicated to particular individuals, see the chapter by Gabriela Signori in this volume (pp. ooo–oo). Most early and high medieval rolls are now available in Jean Dufour, Le rouleau des morts de Saint Bruno, Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-lettres, Comptes rendus, 2003.1 (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-lettres, 2003). On Bruno’s roll, see also Cécilia Falchini, ‘La mort de saint Bruno et son retentissement, d’après les rouleaux funéraires’, in Saint Bruno et sa posterité spirituelle (as n. 1), pp. 97–102. 3 For a discussion of the early modern print of Bruno’s roll by Dupuy, see David Collins, ‘Background and production of the early modern print’, in this volume (pp. oo–ooo) and Pierrette Paravy, ‘Dom François Du Puy, biographe de saint Bruno à l’aube du XVIe siècle’, in Saint Bruno en Chartreuse (as n. 1), pp. 19–30. 4 See mainly Giles Constable, ‘The Image of Bruno of Cologne in his Mortuary Roll’, in Ovidio Capitani: Quaranta anni per la storia medioevale, ed. by Maria Consiglia De Matteis (Bologna: Pàtron, 2003), pp. 63–72; Sylvain Excoffon, ‘Le rouleau des titres funèbres mémoire immédiate de Bruno’, in Saint Bruno en Chartreuse (as n. 1), pp. 3–17. 5 Constable, ‘The Image’, p. 67; Excoffon, ‘Le rouleau’, pp. 10–2. 6 Despite evidently coming from Germany (probably from Cologne), Bruno became a teacher at the cathedral school in Reims after completing his own studies there, and is first documented as a master and then as chancellor, until his conflict with Archbishop Manasses I led him to renounce all positions and retire to a monastery, eventually becoming a hermit. On the background to the years in Reims, see Constant J. Mews’ contribution in this volume (pp. oo-ooo) and Patrick Demouy, ‘Bruno et la réforme de l'Église de Reims’, in Saint Bruno et sa posterité spirituelle (as n. 1), pp. 21–40. 90 high medieval mortuary rolls shows,7 this is a peculiarity of Bruno’s roll, and so invites further investigation. On closer inspection, the question of how teachers were described at the turn of the twelfth century indeed repays interest quite beyond research on Bruno: even a quick glance at the tituli shows that they write about ‘teaching’ in a way that diverges significantly from the modern concept.8 While modern readers tend to assume that teaching, schools and education are secular and even rather technical matters, Bruno’s contemporaries partly understood ‘teaching’ (described as ‘doctrina’, ‘docere’, ‘disciplina’) in a strongly religious sense. And this fits well with our knowledge of the reforms of the religious life which gained momentum in the period from c. 1050 until c. 1150. New charismatic leaders were increasingly seen as ‘teachers’ in the Christian way of life. Robert of Arbrissel, Norbert of Xanten and Bernhard of Clairvaux are some of the best known figures in this group, to which Bruno, too, belonged.9 As the founder of a monastic order, Bruno may well have been associated with this understanding of ‘teaching’ which was gaining influence in high medieval Europe during his life. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 The material in Dufour, Recueil, contains just a few entries commemorating teachers from the eleventh and twelfth centuries; cf. the single titulus for Guarmundus of Tournai († 1107) Dufour, Recueil, no. 111.I, p. 369, and the encyclical commemorating Gilbert of Poitiers’s death († 1154), ibid., no. 139, pp. 652–9. In the following, quotations from Bruno’s mortuary roll (which also appears in Dufour, Recueil, no. 105, pp. 278– 349) follow the edition in the present volume, based on the print ‘In memoriam beati Brunonis’, in François Dupuy, Vita beati Brunonis confessoris primi institutoris ordinis Carthusiensis (Basel: Johann Froben, 1515), fols d5v–i5v (pp. 50–110), referred to hereafter as ‘Rotulus’. All line breaks are indicated by the symbol ‘|’, to be distinguished from the virgule ‘/’, which is routinely used in the Froben print as a punctuation mark and reproduced here. 8 Concepts of teaching, especially regarding its connections to religious and intellectual authority in the ninth to twelfth centuries, form the subject of my dissertation (in German language), published as Kulturen des Lehrens im Früh- und Hochmittelalter. Autorität, Wissenskonzepte und Netzwerke von Gelehrten, Norm und Struktur. Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, 39 (Köln: Böhlau, 2011), especially ch. II. and VI. It contains further detailed documentation and contexts for the arguments made here. 9 Cf. Giles Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, reprint 1998), passim. For examples, see e.g. Franz J. Felten, ‘Zwischen Berufung und Amt. Norbert von Xanten und seinesgleichen im ersten Viertel des 12. Jahrhunderts’, in Charisma und religiöse Gemeinschaft im Mittelalter. Akten des 3. Internationalen Kongresses des Italienisch-deutschen Zentrums für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte, ed. by Giancarlo Andenna, Mirko Breitenstein and Gert Melville, Vita Regularis, 25 (Münster: LIT, 2005), pp. 103–49, esp. pp. 120ff. 91 On the other hand, connotations of ‘teaching’ that we would find more familiar are also clearly present. Bruno was one of the first proponents of early scholastic theology and the authors of several tituli clearly saw him as such, alluding, for example, to his work on the psalms. Andrew Kraebel has recently established Bruno’s authorship of an early scholastic psalm commentary, and the context for and importance of Bruno’s work in this regard is reappraised by Constant Mews in this volume.10 Bruno’s commentary exemplifies a new tendency of the 1040s which would evolve into a central feature of scholastic theology: biblical commentaries were no longer simply starting points for enumerations of the tenets of Christian life. The very language of the Bible and its various authorial voices were also interpreted and elucidated in detail through grammatical and dialectical argumentation. Such work eventually led to a systematization and reordering of the normative content of the Bible and of patristic authorities in twelfth-century Sententiae and Summae.11 The closer we look at contemporary eulogies for famous teachers, it thus appears, the more it emerges that the cultural concept of ‘teaching’ itself was by no means clear-cut, but fairly unstable, undergoing shifts and transformations. This is by no means surprising, as the qualities that distinguished an ideal teacher were a subject of animated and sometimes controversial debate among various twelfth-century social groups forming in schools, cloisters and courts. As is well recognised, the period between about 1050 and 1200 saw deep and lasting changes in the ideas, practices and values of education as in the pursuit of learning in a broader sense. As is becoming clearer, these developments can by no means be reduced to a kind of simple paradigm shift, in which more traditional ‘monastic’ patterns of !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 10 See Andrew B. Kraebel, ‘Grammatica and the authenticity of the Psalms-commentary attributed to Bruno the Carthusian’, Mediaeval Studies, 71 (2009), 63–97. (The text is Divi Brunonis Primi Carthusianorum Institutoris sanctissimi et theologi doctissimi Expositio in Psalmos, in Patrologia Latina, ed by Jean-Paul Migne, vol. 152 (Paris 1856), coll. 637–1420). See also Constant J. Mews’s contribution in this volume, p. oo–ooo and his ‘Bruno of Rheims and Roscelin of Compiègne on the Psalms’, in Latin Culture in the eleventh century. Proceedings of Third International Conference on Medieval Latin Studies, September 9–12 1998, ed. by Michael W. Herren, Christopher J. MacDonough and Ross G. Arthur (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002), 1, pp. 129–52, with references to the older literature. 11 For the overall trends and intellectual developments, see Marcia L. Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), esp. p. 265ff.; Gillian R. Evans, Old arts and new theology. The beginnings of theology as an academic discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); see also below, part 4. 92 learning were superseded by a new ‘scholastic culture’.12 Bruno himself, with his double identity as a monastic leader and as an early scholastic teacher shows how problematic this distinction is. As recent voices have pointed out with increasing insistence, concepts of learning underwent a complex transformation in the twelfth century that produced many different forms of scholarly, poetic and religious expertise and authority.13 To complicate matters, we can also assume that Bruno stood in an older tradition of ecclesiastical cathedral school instruction, traceable to the tenth century and to Carolingian culture, with its own ideals and images of ‘teachers’.14 C. Stephen Jaeger has quite rightly !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12 This view, which transports elements of older modernization theory, is explicit in Harold J. Berman, Law and revolution. The Foundation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981) and implicit in the influenctial work of Richard W. Southern, cf. idem, Western Society and the Church (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970) and his late and unfinished synthesis Scholastic humanism and the unification of Europe, 2 vols, vol. 1: Foundations; Vol. 2: The Heroic Age (Oxford – Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995–2001, esp. vol 1, pp. 3f. For a critique of modernization-oriented historical writing, see Garthine Walker, ‘Modernization’, in Writing Early Modern History, ed. by Garthine Walker, Writing History Series (London – New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), pp. 25–48 (at pp. 25–31). Walker’s critique can easily be applied to twentieth-century historiography of the Middle Ages. 13 A critical appraisal of the old dichotomy of ‘school’ and ‘cloister’ is apparent in recent works, see for example Cédric Giraud, Per verba magistri. Anselme de Laon et son école au XIIe siècle, Bibliothèque d’histoire culturelle du Moyen Âge, 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010); Cédric Giraud and Constant J. Mews, ‘Le Liber pancrisis, un florilège des pères et des maîtres moderns du Xlle siecle’, Archivum latinitatis medii aevi, 65 (2007), 145–91; Constant J. Mews, ‘Scholastic Theology in a Monastic Milieu in the Twelfth Century: The Case of Admont’, in Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in TwelfthCentury Germany, ed. by Alison I. Beach, Medieval Church Studies, 13 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 217– 39, esp. p. 238f; Christel Meier, ‘Autorschaft im 12. Jahrhundert. Persönliche Identität und Rollenkonstrukt’, in Unverwechselbarkeit. Persönliche Identität und Identifikation in der vormodernen Gesellschaft, ed. by Peter von Moos, Norm und Struktur. Studien zum sozialen Wandel in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, 23 (Köln: Böhlau, 2004), pp. 207–66; eadem, ‘Ruperts von Deutz Befreiung von den Vätern. Schrifthermeneutik zwischen Autoritäten und intellektueller Kreativität’, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 73.2 (2006), 257–89; John D. Cotts, ‘Monks and Clerks in Search of the Beata Schola: Peter of Celle's Warning to John of Salisbury Reconsidered’, in Teaching and Learning in Northern Europe, 1000–1200 (as n. 12), pp. 255–77; Frank Bezner, Vela Veritatis. Hermeneutik, Wissen und Sprache in der Intellectual History des 12. Jahrhunderts, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 85 (Leiden–Boston–Cologne: Brill, 2005); Steckel, Kulturen des Lehrens, ch. VI. 14 See C. Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels. Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950– 1200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennysylvania Press, 1994); idem, Scholars and Courtiers. Intellectuals and Society in the Medieval West, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 753 (London: Ashgate, 2002); idem, 93 warned us not to underestimate this older culture of moral, social and intellectual education, which either powered or fed into seemingly new intellectual and cultural trends of the twelfth century.15 Against this backdrop, the perception of Bruno as a ‘teacher’ or ‘master’ in the mortuary roll gains new significance: if we want to paint a more nuanced picture not only of the intellectual but of the cultural transformations of the long twelfth century, we need to reappraise the concepts of teaching used in the sources, and search for diverging and overlapping ideals and practices and their connections to each other. As the tituli dedicated to Bruno’s life and teaching contain a wide range of such views, providing us with a kind of snapshot of the cultural ideals held in 1101/2, they constitute a highly interesting source for this approach. Does the praise of Bruno’s teaching found in various tituli even relate to his activity as a cathedral school teacher in Reims, or to his new method of biblical commentary? Do contemporary authors realize they celebrate a new ‘scholastic’ teacher? Or do we rather find praise for the religious or monastic ‘doctor‘ in a wider sense? What forms of authority were ascribed to Bruno, and how can they be related to contemporary forms of teachership and authorship?16 To give partial answers to these questions, the following pages will discuss individual tituli which portray Bruno as a teacher, contextualising and interpreting them through comparisons with contemporary sources. A number of methodological considerations already established for Bruno’s roll only need to be re-stated briefly. It should be remembered that the occasional poems entered in the roll were intended as panegyric and idealising, that they drew in form and content on a repertoire of known elements, and that not all writers had known Bruno personally. While they cannot be employed unquestioningly as illustrations of Bruno’s historical personality, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ennobling Love. In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennysylvania Press, 2000), esp. ch. 5, pp. 59–81; Mia Münster-Swendsen, ‘The Model of Scholastic Mastery in Northern Europe c. 970– 1200’, in Teaching and Learning in Northern Europe, 1000–1200, ed. by Sally N. Vaughn and Jay Rubenstein, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 307–42; eadem, ‘Medieval ‚Virtuosity‘ – Classroom Practice and the Transfer of Charismatic Power in Medieval Scholarly Culture c. 1000–1230’, in Negotiating heritage. Memories of the Middle Ages, ed. by M. Birkedal Bruun and S.A. Glaser, Ritus et artes: Traditions and Transformations (Turnhout: Brepols, 2009), pp. 43–63. 15 C. Stephen Jaeger, ‘Pessimism in the Twelfth-Century ‘Renaissance’’, Speculum, 78 (2003), 1151–83. 16 For concepts of authority and authorship, see the methodological arguments in Meier, ‘Autorschaft’; Meier/Wagner-Egelhaaf, ‘Einleitung’; Steckel, Kulturen des Lehrens, pp. 531–69 and 1191–7. 94 however, the tituli need not be dismissed out of hand as merely conventional topoi.17 Rather, they should be seen as mediated yet still individual reflections on the central figure of Bruno. The tituli authors engaged with information about Bruno’s person, and connected it to their own ideal conceptions of teaching.18 Through their uses and modifications of well-known literary motifs and topoi, they made choices about what to accentuate in their own eulogies of Bruno. The emphasis on Bruno’s teaching activities is one such choice. It may have been partly intended by the community of La Torre, as the encyclical entered into the roll by the hermits describes how Bruno gave an account of the different parts of his life on his death bed. This drew attention to the fact that, before his conversion, Bruno had taught for many years at the Cathedral School of Reims. According to the encyclical, Bruno moreover testified to his orthodox understanding of the Eucharist in his confession of faith in articulo mortis. In doing so, he took a position on a controversial question among scholars of his time.19 Excoffon further suggests that Bruno seems to have been celebrated as a teacher particularly by those communities which themselves contained a school. As a number of Bruno’s former students produced entries for the roll, Excoffon also points to the possibility that Bruno’s home community sought out such students and planned the path of the rollbearer accordingly.20 What image of Bruno as a teacher, then, characterises the individual tituli, and with what ideals of teaching do they engage? In reading the roll’s entries it is immediately apparent that – wholly in accordance with the practice of their time and genre – they are marked for long stretches by vivid and very visual metaphors. A sojourn of the deceased Bruno among the heavenly host is anticipated often, and with relish, by images of a light-flooded beyond. The representation of Bruno as a !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 17 A largely uncritical use of the tituli e.g. in Émile Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France, tome 5: Les écoles (Lille: Giard, 1940), at pp. 282–5. 18 As noted particularly by Excoffon, ‘Le rouleau’, p. 10, almost all anonymous authors of tituli make extensive use of prior information from various sources – the encyclical prefixed to the roll by the hermit community in La Torre, the oral stories of its bearer, other entries and their own memories; shared cultural ideals can be added to this. 19 Comparable death-bed statements were common at the time and are attested several times, cf. H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Death-bed testaments’, in idem, Popes and church reform in the eleventh century, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 674 (London: Ashgate, 2000), ch. IX: pp. 703–24, at pp. 714–5. 20 Excoffon, ‘Le rouleau’, p. 12. 95 teacher also works through such images, and he is described quite frequently as a ‘light’ and refreshing ‘fount’ of wisdom and knowledge. This is illustrated particularly clearly by the Reims titulus no. 61, which expresses Bruno’s effect on those around him in artfully elaborated metaphors: Quattuor vt fontes ex una parte meantes / ((VERSE)) Quos paradisus habet: mundi per regna fluentes: Exundant terras: sic hic / quos imbuit: ornat / Implet / et informat / inflammat / dirigit / armat / Cudit / et illustrat / et adhuc regit / excolit / aptat / Syderis instar erat cunctis: quos ipse docebat. (‘Just as the four rivers springing from the same spot, which paradise contains, flowing through the kingdoms of the world, flood the lands, so too does he embellish, fill, mould, excite, direct, arm, fashion, enlighten, and still govern, ennoble and prepare those he inspired. He was like a star for everyone he taught’).21 What concept of teaching undergirds this description? Comparable expressions are mostly found in eleventh-century sources concerned with instruction at cathedral schools, described in detail by Jaeger’s studies of ‘charismatic teaching’ from the tenth to twelfth centuries.22 According to the social ideals of cathedral school culture, the teacher appears as the bearer of charismatic authority and as a specialist not only in letters, but in manners (‘litterae’ and ‘mores’). Masters of cathedral schools instructed their charges in virtuous, cultivated conduct, as did abbots and bishops involved in teaching. They did so as bearers of particular divine gifts, which they embodied in a highly personal way. Only alongside this did they also transmit the mastery of the artes liberales and other school disciplines. Education therefore proceded as instruction by word and example, and was characterised at various times in the early and high Middle Ages as ‘docero verbo et exemplo’.23 Always !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 21 Rotulus, no. 61. Unless otherwise indicated, the translations of the mortuary roll are taken from Rodney Lokaj’s translation accompanying the edition below. 22 Jaeger, The Envy of Angels; idem, Scholars and Courtiers; idem, Ennobling Love, pp. 59–81. In comparison with Jaeger, I emphasise somewhat more strongly the religious elements of representations of the teacher. 23 On this aspect of twelfth-century culture, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Docere Verbo et Exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality, Harvard Theological Studies, 31 (Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979); Jaeger, Envy of Angels, ch. 4. 96 aiming for a combination of knowledge and conduct, cathedral school teaching foregrounded the personal presence of the teacher and his embodiment of Christian virtue and even divine inspiration. The teacher was therefore generally characterised in the sources as a radiant, literally ‘shining example’ of the Christian life and as an exemplar of the spiritual elite. To convey this, typical characterisations adapted traditional metaphorical elements that can be traced back to biblical and patristic passages. Exemplary individuals and teachers of all kinds were generally described through the motif of the light that illuminates the world.24 As the Book of Daniel designates those who teach as ‘stars’ (‘stellae’ and ‘splendor firmamenti’), the comparison with stars introduced by the Reims titulus is particularly significant for teachers in the narrower sense of the word.25 The teacher also frequently appeared as a ‘fount’ of special knowledge. In an adaptation of biblical passages likening water to divine grace, he provided his drought-stricken surroundings with refreshing water.26 Finally, teachers of the high Middle Ages were also compared with the luminaries of pagan learning, Plato, Cicero or Aristotle, especially when their particular intellectual competence was to be emphasised. In their contemporaries’ opinions, of course, medieval teachers could always surpass the giants of antiquity through their Christianity and by the aid of God. Implicitly or explicitly, such religiously charged praise for individuals also affirmed the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 24 See especially Matthew 5. 14–16: ‘Vos estis lux mundi. non potest civitas abscondi supra montem posita. neque accendunt lucernam et ponunt eam sub modio sed super candelabrum ut luceat omnibus qui in domo sunt. sic luceat lux vestra coram hominibus ut videant vestra bona opera et glorificent Patrem vestrum qui in caelis est.’ (‘You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.’ Translation taken from Revised Standard Edition). 25 Daniel 12. 3: ‘qui autem docti fuerint fulgebunt quasi splendor firmamenti et qui ad iustitiam erudiunt multos quasi stellae in perpetuas aeternitates’, (‘And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.’). 26 This imagery draws on various biblical passages. See, for example, John 7. 38–9: ‘qui credit in me sicut dixit scriptura flumina de ventre eius fluent aquae vivae. hoc autem dixit de Spiritu quem accepturi erant credentes in eum’ (‘He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water”. Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive’); John 4. 14: ‘qui autem biberit ex aqua quam ego dabo ei non sitiet in aeternum, sed aqua quam dabo ei fiet in eo fons aquae salientis in vitam aeternam’, (‘whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life’). 97 cultural superiority of Christian concepts of doctrine and wisdom to pagan intellectual culture. An interesting illustration of the inner logic of these representations of Christian teachers is contained in a poetic description of the cathedral school teacher Pernolf of Würzburg. Dating from the first half of the eleventh century, this poem, defending Würzburg and its glory against detractors, was apparently composed by Pernolf’s young students around 1031 in the context of a conflict with another cathedral school.27 After their revered teacher Pernolf had been insulted, the students compiled a whole repertoire of panegyric images. Above all, the students referred explicitly to the authority lent to Pernolf by God himself: his intellectual strength was a gift of God and, as the Würzburgers put it, he ‘wielded the sceptre of mastership by Christ’s command’, ‘Imperio Christi moderando sceptra magistri’. His resulting qualification was in turn expressed in a water metaphor: the ‘fount of doctrine‘ streamed from his breast, and God lent him a ‘river’ of speech.28 The Reims titulus obviously relates to similar, strongly sacralised conceptions of teaching. The description of Bruno as a star and fount of paradise ascribes to him a particular divine gift and an ideal fulfillment of the Christian roles of teacher and exemplar. The connected images of divine gift, salvific virtue and radiating effect on others is often invoked in the mortuary roll through concise allusions; several tituli name Bruno as, among other things, ‘lux’, also ‘lux cleri’, or ‘lumen’, and make connections between Bruno’s radiant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 27 This is the so-called ‘Erwiderung der Würzburger Schule auf einen Wormser Angriff’ (Reply of the Würzburg School to an Attack from Worms), reproduced in Die ältere Wormser Briefsammlung, ed. by Walther Bulst, MGH Briefe der deutschen Kaiserzeit 3 (Weimar: Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1949), Appendix, pp. 119–27. For a detailed account of the circumstances of the text’s production, see C. Stephen Jaeger, ‘Friendship and Conflict at the Early Cathedral Schools: The Dispute between Worms and Würzburg,’ in Medieval Germany: Associations and Delineations, ed. Nancy van Deusen, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen/Musicological Studies 62.5 (Ottawa: Institute of Medieval Music, 2000), pp. 49–62, as well as the analysis and translation in Jaeger, Envy of Angels, pp. 66–74. 28 Die ältere Wormser Briefsammlung, p. 120, ll. 24–30: ‘Imperio Christi moderando sceptra magistri | Pręter scripturę studium nihil est sibi curę, | Cultor virtutis manet ęternęque salutis, | Vim talem mentis tenet dono omnipotentis. | Doctrinę rivus fluit eius pectore vivus, | Eternum numen sermonum dat sibi flumen [...]’ (‘Wielding the sceptre of mastership by Christ’s command, nothing beyond the study of scriptures is of interest to him. He remains a teacher of virtue and eternal salvation, and this force of mind he holds by gift of the omnipotent God. A river of doctrine flows from his breast, and the eternal numen gives him a river of speech …’, my translation). 98 virtue in life and his blessedness after death.29 In some cases, elements of the teacher’s praise are combined with other aspects in long lists of epithets, as for instance in the titulus from Bayeux which describes Bruno as a ‘blossom, bright light, star of the Fathers and fount of wisdom’, thus characterising him as an ideal teacher and situating him in the ecclesiastical and patristic tradition. Immediately afterwards, however, Bruno appears as a specifically monastic exemplar, as ‘exemplar vie celestis’ and ‘ordo / regula fratrum’.30 Bruno’s intellectual activities are clearly emphasised by several tituli. In relation to the motif of the teacher as fount, Bruno is repeatedly designated as a fount of philosophy, a term that at this point could still encompass various disciplines of higher learning and forms of intellectual endeavour.31 A large number of entries name Bruno ‘philosophus’, ‘doctor’ or ‘magister (acutus)’.32 Variations of typical elements also occur. The entry from Spalding in England, for instance, begins with a combination of well-known motifs: Ex hoc manauit sapientia tanta per orbem ((VERSE)) Ut quos imbueret / philosophos faceret. Splendor sermonis fuit: et lux relligionis. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 29 ‘Lux’ appears in Rotulus, nos 32, 131, 163, 174, 175; ‘lumen’ in nos 105, 152, 173, 174. Cf. especially Rotulus, nos 174–5. 30 Rotulus, no. 152: ‘Flos eremitarum / lumen mirabile / clarum | Sydus Bruno patrum / vigor / ordo / regula fratrum / | Exemplarque vie celestis / fonsque sophie [...].’ (‘Flower of hermits, bright, wondrous light, Bruno, star of the Fathers, strength, order and rule of the brothers, exemplar of the heavenly path, and spring of wisdom’). 31 Rotulus, no. 32: ‘fons et origo sophiae’; no. 124: ‘fons Philosophiae’; no. 146: ‘Imbutus fonte totius philosophie.’ For concepts of philosophy, see Gangolf Schrimpf, ‘“Philosophi” – “philosophantes”. Zum Selbstverständnis der vor- und frühscholastischen Denker’, Studi medievali, Ser 3a 23 (1982), 697–727. 32 Testimonies from Bruno’s students employing specific elements of praise for the teacher are nos 3, 39, 45, 79, 81 (5 entries in total). References to radiating exemplarity alongside other elements appear in nos 8, 26, 29, 31, 32, 43, 44, 48, 52, 53, 54, 61, 66, 67, 70, 71, 74, 78, 81, 84, 104, 105, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 120, 121, 124, 132, 136, 146, 152, 153, 155, 168, 169 (38 entries in total). Bruno’s activity as a teacher is particularly emphasised in nos 64, 77, 107, 114, 126, 131, 156, 166, 168, 173, 175 (11 in total). Designations as ‘doctor’ or ‘magister’ (identical with Excoffon, ‘Le rouleau’, p. 10, note 43): Rotulus, nos 3, 31, 37, 39, 45, 56, 61, 64, 66, 77, 78, 79, 90, 104, 109, 113, 121, 123, 125, 131, 135, 144, 155, 166, 173, 176 (25 in total). 99 ([From Bruno], ‘so much wisdom flowed thoughout the world as to turn into philosophers all those it touched. He was a splendour in speaking and a light of religiosity.’)33 Bruno is, then, an exemplar in ‘sermo’ as in ‘religio’. This time, however, he does not appear as a star – the entry turns to amplification and variation: Jn mundo rutilat solis iubar / et rutilando. ((VERSE)) Transit: et excedit sidera clara poli. Sic et Brunonis sapientia tanta refulsit Jnter francorum sidera: solus vt hic Esset cunctorum flos: et fons philosophorum: Flos speciosus erat / fonsque profundus erat. (‘In the world, the sun’s radiance shines red, and sets in a red glow, outshining the bright stars of the heavens. Bruno’s great wisdom also shone so brightly among the stars of the Franks that it seemed to be the only flower among them and the spring of philosophers. Indeed, he was a beautiful flower and deep spring.’)34 Bruno’s wisdom is so great that, like the sun, it outshines the other French ‘stars’ – that is, teachers. He himself is not only named ‘blossom’ and ‘fount’ or ‘well’, but is also a particularly beautiful blossom and a particularly deep well. In a similar amplification, one of the tituli from around Reims simply calls Bruno the best teacher on earth.35 While some entries, namely those from Reims,36 celebrate Bruno through comparisons with biblical figures, two tituli emphasise Bruno’s status as a teacher through comparisons with the luminaries of antiquity. It is noteworthy that both come from the region of Angers, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 33 Rotulus, no. 131. 34 Rotulus, no. 131. A variation of the comparison of Bruno with the sun among stars is also found without special relation to Bruno’s teaching activities: in the school verses from Chartres, Bruno appears as a moon among the stars. Rotulus, no. 32: ‘Quam phebe phebo: quam cetera sydera lune: | Tam totus mundus assit tibi gallice Bruno’, (‘Like Phoebe unto Phoebus, like the other stars to the moon, let the whole world be so to you, Gallic Bruno!’). 35 Rotulus, no. 64: ‘Huius doctoris fuit hec vis cordis / et oris : | Vt toto cunctos superaret in orbe magistros. | Sic meditando bonus fuit: atque loquendo disertus.’ (‘The strength of spirit and eloquence of this learned man was such that he surpassed every other teacher in the entire world. So good was he when thinking and clear when speaking’; Translation adapted from Rodney Lokaj’s translation in this volume). 36 Rotulus, nos 53, 55. 100 renowned as a centre of classicizing poetry and literature.37 The titulus of the Cathedral of St Maurice at Angers begins by praising Bruno’s renown in Gaul and in Calabria, claiming that it surpasses that of Virgil and Plato.38 In the Benedictine monastery of St Nicholas at Angers, this motif was taken up to form the basis of an extremely catchy rhythmic variant, which also compares Bruno with Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. Bruno’s superiority as a Christian to pagan thinkers is clearly emphasised here: Bruno fuit fons doctrine norma veri dogmatis: ((VERSE)) Aristotelis profunda superans / et socratis: Supergrediens platonem: sacri dono chrismatis: (‘Bruno was a spring of learning, a rule of true scholarship going beyond the profundities of both Aristotle and Socrates and surpassing Plato, thanks to the gift of holy baptism.’).39 Numerous tituli, then, utilized well-known elements, typical of the cathedral school milieu, to describe Bruno as an ideal teacher and Christian exemplar. With the help of these conventional motifs, Bruno was shown to have achieved or even surpassed the ideal of the Christian teacher. The vivid metaphors of the Reims titulus cited earlier depicted Bruno’s radiant effect on his surroundings primarily in general terms. But one particular component of the teacher’s effectiveness was the bond between him and his students. A formative conception for the early and high Middle Ages was that students, sharing a communal life with the teacher (convictus), were educated by the ‘imprint’ of his exemplary physical presence and ended up replicating his virtue or vice. Two results of this bond can be emphasised in interpreting the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 37 Cf. Walther Bulst, Studien zu Marbods Carmina varia und Liber decem capitulorum, Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Philol.-hist. Klasse. Fachgruppe 4. N.F. 2,10, pp. 173–241, (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1939); Gerald A. Bond, ‘“Iocus amoris”: The Poetry of Baudri of Bourgueil and the Formation of the Ovidian Subculture’, Traditio 42 (1986), 143–93. On the wider field see most recently Petra Aigner, ‘Der Helenamythos in der Rezeption des Baudri de Bourgueil und Godefroid de Reims. Gab es ein griechisches Umfeld und Kenntnisse der griechischen Literatur?’, MIÖG 114 (2006), 1– 25. 38 Rotulus, no. 166: ‘Eius et eximia celebratur vbique sophia. | Plusque Maronis laudatur lingua Brunonis. | Gloria Platonis vilescit laude Brunonis.’ (‘Bruno’s tongue is praised more highly than Vergil’s. Plato’s glory disappears against praise of Bruno.’). 39 Rotulus, no. 167. 101 roll. Since the Carolingian period, scholars had been convinced that students’ moral conduct and reputation determined, on one hand, their teacher’s reputation among people and, on the other, the teacher’s reward before God. In the absence of formalized examination procedures before the thirteenth century, students’ reputations conversely depended largely on their teacher’s renown.40 Thanks to this logic of mutual identification, students were for the most part very willing to portray their own teacher in a positive light, as his renown beyond his own region reflected back upon them. Nonetheless, this bond was not conceived of in purely pragmatic terms by contemporaries. On the contrary, the teaching relationship was understood in the eleventh century as a relationship of love founded on virtue.41 Thus, a double connection of teacher and student – before God and before man – pervaded eleventh-century attitudes towards pedagogy. It was particularly important in increasing a teacher’s renown. We catch an interesting glimpse of this in a letter by Anselm of Canterbury († 1109), an immediate contemporary of Bruno and another early scholastic thinker who focused on rational argument in biblical studies. Anselm could thank one of his own students in glowing terms: Above all, I thank you as much as I can, because wherever you live it is in a way that brings me honour even among unknown people and strangers, simply for having raised such a student – even though it was not me, but the Holy Spirit who taught you to live well.42 Bruno’s roll provides equally interesting material concerning the idea of a teacherstudent bond before God. Ideally, teacher and student were bound to reciprocal intercession and remembrances of the dead. They remained connected beyond the period of instruction and even beyond death through a kind of pragmatic spiritual responsibility. For students, a deceased teacher represented an important potential intercessor in the next life – if it could be assumed that the teacher’s exemplarity would allow him to advance to the heavenly host and find audience there. Another contemporary and colleague of Bruno, the master Bernhard of Hildesheim († 1088), was convinced that this would be the case for his former teacher !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 40 Cf. Jaeger, Envy of Angels, pp. 76–87; my Kulturen des Lehrens, pp. 124–30 and 196–217. 41 Cf. Münster-Swendsen, ‘Medieval virtuosity’; Jaeger, Ennobling Love, ch. 5. 42 Anselmus Cantuariensis, Epistolae, ed. by F.S. Schmitt, Anselmi Cantuariensis Opera Omnia, vol. 3 (Edinburgh: T. Nelson and sons, 1946), no. 60, p. 175: ‘Ante omnia gratias tibi quantas possum ago, quia ubicumque sic vivis ut, quamquam non ego sed spiritus sanctus te bene vivere docuerit, tamen honor mihi sit etiam inter ignotos et alienigenos talem nutrisse discipulum’. My translation. 102 Adalbert. He therefore asked his old master for support during his imminent entrance into the next life: I pray that you will not forget me, when, in that ineffable joy, you penetrate the heavens, and reach the divine ear – I still keep your memory, as I wish devoutly to stick to the way of life and of acting that you showed […] farewell, future senator of the heavenly court!43 The teacher for his part could expect recompense after death if he had formed exemplary Christian students. With every well-educated student, he increased his own merit in the next life, for there his students would bear witness for him. This situation is rehearsed in detail in the representation of the scholar Pernolf of Würzburg mentioned earlier. Although defending Pernolf’s renown in this world was his students’ primary concern, their apologia also referred to the Day of Judgement, when the Lord of Heaven would call the faithful before his throne. Then, they believed, an indubitable proof of Pernolf’s impugned qualifications would be given: Pro meritis vitę tunc doctrinis † decorate ((VERSE)) Hic ceu sol lucet seu secum gaudia ducet Discipulos cunctos eius moderamine functos. Pontifices summi quem tunc sectantur alumni, Pro quis lucescit stellis par ac requiescit Talibus augmentis gaudens de quinque talentis Nunc commendatis sibi tunc dominoque relatis. (‘Due to the merits of life and doctrine decorating him (?), this one shines like the sun, and with gladness leads with him all the disciples that have known his rule, now high pontiffs who then followed him as students. Because of them, he shines bright like the stars and finds rest, happy about such profit from his five talents, once given to him and now fully reckoned to the Lord’).44 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 43 Bernhard’s letter is preserved in a treatise by Bernold of Constanz: Bernaldi Libellus II: De damnatione scismaticorum, ed. by F. Thaner, MGH LdL 2, pp. 26–58, here p. 47: ‘[...] precans, ut in illo ineffabili iubilo, quo caelum penetras, quo divinam permulces aurem, mei non obliviscaris, qui tui saltem tunc memor existo, cum tui conversacionem, tritamque vivendi semitam devotus exopto. Vix refrenata penna dicam invito ore: “Vale gloria Israel, vale curiae celestis conscripte senator!”’. My translation. On Bernhard, see F.-J. Schmale, s.v. ‘Bernhard v. Hildesheim’, Lexikon des Mittelalters 1 (1980), cols 1999–2000. 44 Wormser Briefsammlung, p. 121, ll. 72–82. 103 Pernolf had thus used his ‘talents’ (Matthew 25. 14–25) and would be able to point to a host of students on the day of judgement. We also find another version of the biblical comparison with the stars. Additionally Pernolf, like Bruno, appears as the sun, thanks to a life rich in merits and doctrines – and thanks to his students. The notional figure of students as a kind of performance record for their teacher is found in countless variations in early and high medieval texts, especially in biographies. A noteworthy detail in the description of Pernolf is that his students are characterised quite precisely as ‘summi pontifices’, that is, high ranking spiritual dignitaries, probably bishops. Referring to the careers of particular students was already a well-established tradition by the eleventh century. It appears, at least indirectly, in Bruno’s roll: although his most prominent student, Pope Urban II, is missing, the roll nevertheless contains a series of testimonies from successful students, including the bishops Robert of Langres and Rangerius of Lucca and the abbots Lambert of Pothières, Mainard of Corméry and Peter of St John (the latter heading a convent of regular canons in Soissons).45 All his students depicted themselves as very moved by Bruno’s death. They made specific testimonies and promised to offer particular prayers and masses. Bishop Rangerius, for instance, promised personal intercession for Bruno ‘pro debito speciali et amoris privilegio’ (‘because of his particular debt and privilege of love’).46 The case is similar for the abbot of regular canons in Soissons, who dwells on his particular duty towards his teacher and mentions the latter’s potentially efficacious intercessions in the next life.47 Moreover, he committed his whole convent to special memorials. Bishop Robert of Langres could even offer the prayers and almsgiving of the clergy and monks throughout his whole diocese, and had Bruno entered in the necrology.48 Clearly, students with higher offices were able to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 45 For Bishop Rangerius (probably of Lucca), see Rotulus, no. 3, Bishop Robert of Langres, no. 39, Abbot Lambert of Pothières, no. 45, Abbot Peter of the Regular Canons of St John in Soissons, no. 79, Abbot Mainardus of Corméry, no. 176 (Mainardus calls himself ‘prior’ in the roll, but is listed as abbot from 1102 onwards in the Gallia Christiana; see Dufour, Recueil, p. 347). 46 Rotulus, no. 3 (my translation). 47 Rotulus, no. 79: ‘Ejus ergo me|moriam / tum quia magister noster fuit: tum quia precibus ejus / et vestris | confidimus: tanto apud Deum efficatioribus / quanto sanctioribus / hoc | modo habituros promittimus […]’ (Given that he was our teacher and given that we confide in his prayers and yours – which, the holier they are, the more efficacious they are with God – we promise to act in the following way […]’). 48 The complete titulus (Rotulus, no. 39) reads: ‘Robertus Lingonensis ecclesie seruus / rogabat eiusdem ecclesie ca|nonicos / et sacerdotes / monachos / eremitas / in episcopatu Lin|gonensi domino seruientes: vt 104 multiply the teacher’s spiritual rewards in a pragmatic way: those in higher positions could also urge their subordinates to commemorate the dead. One particularly emotional testimony further documents the depth of the connection between teacher and students. In a letter written into the roll and addressed to the community of La Torre, Mainardus, Abbot of the monastery at Cormery, recalls how the news of Bruno’s death reached him. Although he rejoiced at Bruno’s glorious death, he was nonetheless also deeply saddened and unable to hold back his tears. He had long treasured the thought of returning to his former teacher in Calabria and entering his community. His grief was correspondingly great, and he had decided to directly convert the thanks which he could no longer give Bruno himself into acts of commemoration and intercession: ‘profectusque mei gra|tes domino Brunoni / et si in hac vita reddere non potui: | nunc saltem anime illius exhibere statui’ (‘if I did not manage to return my gratitude in this life, now at least I have determined to show the same gratitude to his soul’).49 He also promised to urge others towards similar devotion and vowed to pray for Bruno as much as for himself as long as he lived.50 All in all, Excoffon’s suggestion that a special effort may have been made to find Bruno’s former students seems very plausible.51 Students were particularly obliged to their teacher and could also provide particularly authentic individual testimonies. At the time of Bruno’s death, his teaching activities in Reims lay a quarter of a century in the past. The personal tituli of his students in the roll now re-presented his merits before God and humans. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! orent pro anima charissimi magistri sui | Brunonis / et eleemosynas pauperibus largiantur/ memoriamque | obitus sui / in quibus poterit ecclesijs / scriptam obseruari faciet.’ (‘Robert, servant of the Church of Langres, asked the canons of the same church and the priests, monks and hermits serving the Lord within the bishopric of Langres to pray for the soul of his most dear master, Bruno, and to give alms to the poor. And where he can in these communities he will have a written entry on Bruno’s death observed’). 49 Rotulus, no. 176. 50 Rotulus, no. 176: ‘Habebo itaque illum /| omnesque in christo dilectores eius in memoriali meo: | quamdiu spirare potero: vniuersosque conuictores meos | filios / ac fratres spirituales ad idem opus pro posse meo pro| uocabo. excitabo / promouebo / preces: oblationes: ele-| mosynas: pro eo non aliter: nec minus: quam pro meipso offe|ram deo trinitati / quamdiu fuerit spiritus in naribus meis.’ (‘And so I shall keep him in my memorial prayers, together with all those who loved him in Christ. For as long I can breathe and as much as I can, I shall invite all my sons and spiritual brothers living here with me to carry out the same task. I shall arouse and promote prayers, offerings and alms for his benefit, not otherwise and not less than I would do for my own, consecrating them to God the Trinity for as long as there is breath in my nostrils’). 51 Excoffon, ‘Le rouleau’, p. 7. 105 As emerges from the entries discussed so far, the concepts of ideal Christian teaching we encounter in Bruno’s roll conform rather well to the ideals already current in the cultural milieux of eleventh-century cathedral schools. Yet, as outlined in the introduction, these ideas were subjected to growing competition in the beginning twelfth century. From the mideleventh century, growing demand for specific forms of higher education led to a shift towards more professional and method-oriented curricula in some schools, eventually leading to the development of the early scholastic method, which entailed fundamental epistemological shifts.52 At the same time, the standards of moral conduct demanded of clerics and religious orders were raised significantly in a context of multiform religious, institutional and intellectual reforms. As a result, newly emerging monastic orders like the Cistercians, old and new regular canons and secular clergy developed a tendency to compete amongst themselves, not least over pastoral care, which was understood as a form of teaching.53 Consequently, the idea of teaching through word and example (‘docere verbo et exemplo’), which made moral conduct the central prerequisite for the office of ‘teaching‘, gained new importance.54 Yet old ideals were modified and formulated in new ways. If we attempt to reach a bird’s-eye view of the many strands of twelfth-century educational culture, it becomes quickly obvious that change didn’t consist in one great innovation, but in several diverging new interpretations of old patterns. Under the pressure of multifaceted new educational needs of princely and clerical courts, and of cities, schools and religious orders, old ideals like that of ‘teaching through word and example’ were bound to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 52 For an overview, see Evans, Old Arts and New Theology; Toivo J. Holopainen, Dialectic and Theology in the Eleventh Century, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 54 (Leiden – New York – Köln: Brill, 1996). On the broader social contexts, see Peter Classen, ‘Die hohen Schulen und die Gesellschaft im 12. Jahrhundert’, in idem, Studium und Gesellschaft im Mittelalter, ed. by Johannes Fried, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 29 (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1983, first published 1966), pp. 1–26. 53 For the various reform movements of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, see Constable, Reformation; for the interrelation of various movements see also Herbert Grundmann, Religious movements of the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1996); first published as Religiöse Bewegungen des Mittelalters [...] (Berlin: Ebering, 1935). For the pastoral role of monks see also Phyllis G. Jestice, Wayward monks and the religious revolution of the eleventh century, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 76 (Leiden–New York– Cologne: Brill, 1997). 54 Cf. Walker Bynum, Docere Verbo et Exemplo; for the early medieval period see also Steckel, Kulturen des Lehrens, pp. 116–24. 106 disintegrate. In the course of the later eleventh and twelfth centuries, we can see them transforming into a variety of concepts of teaching. The new scholastic theologicans came to rely on teaching by word. Older concepts of charismatic teaching had emphasised ‘mores’ more than ‘litterae’ because they saw virtuous conduct as a prerequisite for receiving the higher, divine truth that students strove to master. The scholastics instead came to focus on the transmission of humanly knowable, methodically organized intellectual content (scientia), and with this shift, the teacher no longer needed to be a personal exemplar mediating contact to the divine. Only a certain amount of virtue was necessary to protect the human faculty of perception from ruination by vice.55 In transition to the idea that above-average intellectual ability was the quality called for in a teacher, intellectual competence grew to be understood as a ‘talent’ of its own – as a positive, independent form of divine grace – and was thus legitimised in religious terms, for instance by the theologian Peter Abelard († 1142).56 But as the new scholastic theologians would grow to emphasize, special expertise for certain text traditions was necessary. Scholarly authority came to rest on the mastery of recognised scientific terms and rules involved in textual interpretation. A cathedral school education that would have been considered well-rounded in 1100 was no longer enough – much less simple goodwill or virtuous, religious living.57 At the other end of a broad spectrum, some new religious groups prioritized teaching by example (‘docere exemplo’). They primarily aimed to transmit knowledge about religious conduct. Monastic perfection in particular was pursued, not by exercising one’s intellectual powers on human knowledge, but rather by the active striving of the whole human being towards God, which brought a reform of the inner self and enabled direct contact with or experience of the divine. Some monastic authors indeed envisioned a complete conversion and renewal of the homo interior. The Cistercian William of St Thierry († 1147) was to !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 55 Cf. also Gillian R. Evans, Getting it Wrong: The Medieval Epistemology of Error, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 63 (Leiden–New York–Cologne: Brill, 1998). 56 For a discussion of the religious background of this stance, see Peter von Moos, ‘Die angesehene Meinung. Studien zum endoxon im Mittelalter. II. Abaelard’, Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 45 (1998), 343–80, here 376–9. 57 For the new emphasis on the handling of texts and language as markers of expertise, see e.g. Bezner, Vela veritatis; Jan Ziolkowski, ‘Mastering authors and authorising masters in the long twelfth century’, in Latinitas Perennis. Vol. I: The Continuity of Latin Literature, ed. by Wim Verbaal, Yannick Maes, and Jan Papy, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 144 (Leiden-New York-Cologne: Brill, 2007), pp. 93–118. 107 implore God in his writings to let his old self ‘die’, so that he could begin to live anew in God – ‘dying in myself, I shall begin to live in you’.58 At least until the end of the twelfth century these latter groups also framed their ideas as concepts of ‚teaching’. They understood ‘disciplina’ and ‘doctrina’ as an induction into Christian or even specifically monastic or clerical conduct. The best teaching, to them, was the individual exemplar of a charismatic, divinely gifted teacher or preacher with personal experience of a monastic conversion, as for example Bernard of Clairvaux.59 Additionally, an ideal of a radical renewal of personal authority through religious conversion was also adapted to legitimise new religious writing, as documented by Christel Meier’s investigations of concepts of authorship in the twelfth century.60 Especially when faced with hostility towards their seemingly dissenting voices, authors like Rupert of Deutz († 1129) or Hildegard of Bingen († 1179) defended their authorship with the help of elaborate authorisation narratives, detailing empowering experiences of visions and vocations which had changed their whole selves. Based on such forms of religious conversion, they claimed a right to compose new !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 58 Cf. the passage in context, Guillelmi a Sancto Theodorico De contemplando Deo, in Guillelmi a Sancto Theodorico Opera Omnia III. Opera Didactica et Spiritualia, ed. by Stanislav Ceglar (SDB) and Paul Verdeyen (SJ), CCCM, 88 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 1–91 (at c. 6, p. 156): ‘oro ut citius a te aperiantur, non sicut aperti sunt Adam carnales oculi [...] sed ut uideam, Domine, gloriam tuam; ut oblitus paruitatis et paupertatis meae, totus erigar et curram in amplexus amoris tui, uidens quem amauero, et amans quem uidero; et moriens in me, uiuere incipiam in te.’ (‘I pray that my eyes might quickly be opened by you – not in the way that Adam’s carnal eyes were opened (…), but so that I might see, Lord, your glory. So that, forgetful of the smallness and poverty of my nature, I will be wholly lifted up and can run into the embrace of your love, seeing whom I love and loving what I see. And dying in myself, I shall begin to live in you.’ (My translation.) 59 An excellent example is provided by the Benedictine Abbot Wibald of Stablo-Malmedy, who recorded his praise of Bernard of Clairvaux in the 1140s. See Wibaldi Epistolae, in Monumenta Corbeiensia, ed. by Ph. Jaffé, Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum, 1 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1864; reprint 1964), Ep. 167, pp. 285f: ‘vir nostrorum temporum valde illustris Bernhardus Claraevallensis abbas. […] ille vir bonus, longo heremi squalore et ieiuniis ac pallore confectus et in quandam spiritualis formae tenuitatem redactus, prius persuadet visus quam auditus. [...] Hunc tu vere dixisses eloquentem, qui non destruxit opere, quod predicat ore […].’ (‘Bernard of Clairvaux, a very illustrious man of our time … this good man is marked by the squalor of a long desert life and by the pallor of fasting, and thus reduced to a thin and spiritual form, so that the very sight of him persuades [even] before he is heard. … You would call him truly eloquent, as he does not destroy in his conduct what he preaches in his words …’ My translation.) 60 For the following paragraph, see Meier, ‘Autorschaft’, especially pp. 238–40. 108 writings, and to publicly promulgate their own ‘teachings’ which they saw as better than those of the schools. Judging by their success, this found broad acceptance. But there were also conflicts, of a rather spectacular nature – and they tend to influence and possibly even distort our view. We know that by the middle of the twelfth century, important representatives of early scholastic theology were accused of heresy in highly publicized ‘trials of ideas’ (Monagle).61 Richard W. Southern somewhat dramatically described the last of these trials, against Peter Abaelard (1141) and Gilbert of Poitiers (1147– 8), as ‘decisive battles’ in which the new schoolmen won important territories away from older monastic culture. The new monks like the Cistercians, who had acted as accusers in the 1140s, in turn soon became targets of learned satires themselves.62 From the 1130s onwards, these conflicts thus momentarily created coalitions that make it possible to speak of an opposition between ‘scholastic’ and ‘monastic’ theology in France. What ‘teaching’ may have implied for various audiences in 1101, however, is less clear. As mentioned above, recent research shows how discourses surrounding forms of teaching in the decades around 1100 were much more complex than is usually assumed.63 Whether any very marked differences between an intellectual culture of the schools and a new religious and monastic impetus were perceived, much less connected to descriptions of teaching, is thus an interesting question, especially with our mortuary roll in mind: Though Bruno was famous as a teacher and as a religious reformer, we have so far seen him described in extravagant but traditional terms. But some of the tituli allow insights into new developments. In particular, one long and complex poetic entry, titulus no. 166, entered at the cathedral of Angers, adds important nuances to our overall view of concepts of teaching. As it contains numerous allusions, and in fact exemplifies various metaphors and rhetorical devices already discussed, this entry calls for a somewhat closer reading. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 61 On the trials of Abaelard and Gilbert of Poitiers, see Constant J. Mews, ‘The Council of Sens (1141): Abaelard, Bernard, and the Fear of Social Upheaval‘, Speculum 77 (2002), 342–82; Clare Monagle, ‘The Trial of Ideas: Two Tellings of the Trial of Gilbert of Poitiers‘, Viator 35 (2004), 113–29 and my Kulturen des Lehrens, pp. 1085–1125. 62 For a survey of various views of teaching in the twelfth century, see Jaeger, Envy of Angels, pp. 239–325; Stephen C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The Schools of Paris and Their Critics 1100–1215 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985). 63 See above, n. 11–15. 109 The titulus from Angers begins by stressing Bruno’s renown in a familiar manner: emphasising his intellectual calibre, it compares him with the classical luminaries Virgil and Plato – whom he naturally surpassed.64 Praise of Bruno as a capable teacher is then introduced through a description of his students. Similarly to the writers of the tituli already discussed, the anonymous author from Angers praises Bruno’s effect on his pupils. Yet he does not do so using traditional motifs – there is a decisive innovation. For the anonymous author, Bruno is not a teacher of future bishops, but rather a teacher of teachers, ‘doctor doctorum’: Hic precellebat doctoribus / hic faciebat ((VERSE)) Summos doctores / non instituendo minores. Doctor doctorum fuit hic / non clericorum. Nam nec honestates verborum / nec grauitates Sumpsit Brunonis: nisi vir magne rationis: (‘He far surpassed other teachers and, rather than instructing children, created great teachers. He was a teacher of teachers, not of clerks. No one in fact picked up the purity or gravity of Bruno’s language if he was not a man of great intellect’).65 The strength of this statement appears clearly if we compare it with similar formulations in the roll. The verses from Spalding, for example, described Bruno as a sun among the stars of France, and similarly saw him as making philosophers of all his students and being a ‘fons philosophorum’.66 The school verses from Coutances describe Bruno as the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 64 Rotulus, no. 166: ‘Gallia tristatur: calaber populus lachrymatur: | Doctoremque bonum gemit ista/ flet illa patronum. | Vite presentis hec laudat eum documentis. | Eius et eximia celebratur vbique sophia. | Plusque Maronis laudatur lingua Brunonis. | Gloria Platonis vilescit laude Brunonis.’ (‘France mourns, the people of Calabria weep. The former mourns the good teacher, the latter weep over the founder. The former praises him with documents of the present life and his great wisdom is celebrated everywhere. Bruno’s tongue is praised more highly than Virgil’s. Plato’s glory disappears against praise for Bruno.’). 65 Rotulus, no. 166. 66 Rotulus, no. 131: ‘Jn mundo rutilat solis iubar / et rutilando. | Transit: et excedit sidera clara poli. | Sic et Brunonis sapientia tanta refulsit | Jnter francorum sidera: solus vt hic | Esset cunctorum flos: et fons philosophorum: | Flos speciosus erat / fonsque profundus erat. | Ex hoc manavit sapientia tanta per orbem / | Ut quos imbueret, philosophos faceret.’ (translation above at n. 33). 110 ‘multorum preceptor grammaticorum’, ‘instructor of many masters’.67 Two further tituli name Bruno ‘doctor doctorum’, ‘teacher of teachers’, although without further comment.68 But in comparison with the wording of the entry from Spalding, which emphasises Bruno’s enormous number of students through a topos of ineffability,69 the entry from Angers, along with these other tituli, alters the motif quite specifically: Bruno was not only better than other teachers because he taught more students – he was more important than others because he did not occupy himself with instructing ‘minores’.70 This is a clear departure from tradition. In the eleventh century and earlier periods, the ideal teacher was usually described as benevolently teaching both beginners and advanced students, finding appropriate tasks for each. This was habitually expressed through the biblical metaphor of feeding with milk and bread – an image also found in Bruno’s roll, in the verses from the School of St Vaast.71 The anonymous writer from Angers thus alters the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 67 Rotulus, no. 156. These verses do not designate Bruno as ‘rhetor, dialecticus astrologusque’ (‘rhetor, dialectian, astrologer’), as Constable, ‘The Image’, p. 68, assumes; these groups of experts are introduced as exemplary bearers of specialised knowledge, which does not help to overcome death. 68 Rotulus, nos 77 (Bernay) and 175 (School verses from Nieul-sur-l’Autise). 69 Rotulus, no. 131: ‘Eius doctrina sunt facti tot sapientes. | Quos mea mens nescit: et mea penna tacet’ (‘Thanks to his teachings, so many have become knowledgeable that my mind does not know how many and my pen falls silent.’). 70 It should be noted that Dufour (Recueil, no. 105, 166, p. 343) emends ‘doctor doctorum … non clericorum’ in the passage above to ‘doctor doctorum … non clericulorum’ (my emphasis). This reading would add much strength to the interpretation proposed here, but Dufour does not give any reasons for this emendation, which first appears in the Acta Sanctorum edition. It seems to be pure conjecture departing from the very clear reading of ‘clericorum’ in the Dupuy print. 71 Rotulus, no. 126: ‘modo lactaret Remos, modo pane cibaret.’ ([Bruno’s muse] ‘gave the people of Reims milk to drink, then bread to eat’, my translation.) Other contemporary descriptions of teachers also use this metaphor, see e.g. the Vita of the monastic reformer and bishop Wolfgang von Regensburg (972–994), composed by Otloh of St. Emmeram in the mid-eleventh century: Otlohni Vita Sancti Wolfkangi episcopi, ed. by G. Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores 4 (Hannover: Hahn, 1841; reprint Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1981), pp. 521–42, c. 7, p. 529: ‘sicut discipulis eius narrantibus audivimus, adeo se temperavit inter alumnos, ut, cum quibusdam capacioribus artium vel auctorum difficilia quaeque et profunda enodaret, mox ad idiotas simplicioresque se vertens, et nutricis more quasi lacteum historiae cibum praecoquens suppeditaret.’ (‘As we have heard from his disciples, he acted so temperately among his students that, even though he unknotted the difficult things from the arts and authors for the few more capable students, he would always turn to the unlearned and simpler ones, and, much like a wet nurse, give them something like milk by preparing the pre-cooked food of histories for them.’ My translation.) 111 image of the ideal teacher by describing Bruno’s instruction as more challenging than usual. Bruno’s ‘honestas’ and ‘gravitas’ could only be grasped by ‘viri magnae rationis’ – most literally ‘men of great understanding’, but here possibly also translatable as ‘men with a knowledge of the rules of rational logic’. By contrast, praise of the schoolmaster Pernolf of Würzburg had stressed the episcopal offices held by his students. Through this qualification – Bruno was not an exemplar for the spiritual elite as a whole, but rather educated a few mentally acute experts – the ideal of teaching seems to veer quite explicitly towards a newly intellectual self-conceptualisation of scholars. The remark that Bruno’s teaching was hard to understand even puts the finger on a highly problematic aspect of scholastic theology: the technical terms developed by theologians like Bruno or later Peter Abaelard and Gilbert of Poitiers could leave nonspecialists rather daunted. In a culture still geared towards the teaching of sacred doctrine to any and all Christians, of giving ‘milk and bread’ to everyone, this was about to turn into a genuine problem. As late as 1147/48, Gilbert of Poitiers would be brought to trial for heresy, not least because his new, scrupulously methodical theology was difficult to grasp and caused misunderstandings. His trial, which did not result in a conviction, marks something of a watershed – in the mid-twelfth century, contemporary audiences seem to have learned to live with a new form of intellectual debate in France, if not in Germany.72 As the unconcerned allusion to this issue in Bruno’s rotulus shows, however, the problem was only beginning to emerge in 1101. But still, the titulus from Angers seems to offer an early example of contemporaries’ sharpened perceptions of a new kind of instruction, eventually called ‘scholastic theology’. This is quite remarkable – especially if we consider that it took another two generations, until at least the middle of the twelfth century, for an ideal of the professional scholastic theologian, supported by scientia, to appear clearly in other sources. Teachers active around 1101, the date of the rotulus, were mostly still being described and eulogized in ways typical of the older kind of cathedral school master. This is even true of great luminaries like master Anselm of Laon († 1117), an important transitional figure who made much headway in developing important forms of scholastic theology, and would be called the ‚master of future masters’ by modern scholars.73 But verses composed on the occasion of Anselm’s death praise him in terms which are different – though quite as exalted as those in Bruno’s tituli. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 72 Cf. Steckel, Kulturen des Lehrens, pp. 1125–77. 73 Cf. Southern, Scholastic humanism, vol. 2, p. 25. 112 Anselm of Laon was ‘Princeps doctorum, flos cleri, gloria vatum’ (‘prince of the teachers, flower of the clergy, glory of the seers’) according to Marbod of Rennes († 1123). Other verses roughly contemporary to his death praise his great fame, sweet teaching, his morals, chastity, knowledge of all the disciplines, superiority to the ancients etc. etc.74 Only in hindsight, well into the middle decades of the twelfth century, were great masters like Anselm set apart from ‘mere’ schoolmasters. Intriguingly, exactly the same motif that the author from Angers had used for Bruno was then applied to Anselm of Laon, too: in the middle of the twelfth century, John of Salisbury († 1180), one of the chief witnesses to the development of the new schools in France, called him ‘perpetua Lauduni gloria illustrium doctorum doctor Anselmus’, ‘the perpetual glory of Laon, Anselm, the doctor of famous doctors’.75 In German-speaking lands, where intellectual developments were heavily influenced by the Investiture Controversy and monastic reforms, a similar epitheton was applied to Manegold von Lautenbach († after 1103), a monastic convert and reformer leading the German Gregorian circles and celebrated amongst them for his intellectual capacity. Looking back to a glorious founding figure of German reform in the middle of the twelfth century, the monk Wolfger of Prüfening called him a ‘modernorum magister magistrorum’, ‘master of modern masters’.76 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 74 See the discussion of most of the funerary poetry composed for Anselm of Laon in Giraud, Per verba magistri, Anselme de Laon, pp. 71–4 (quotation from Marbod of Rennes, from Carmina varia, PL 171, ed. by Jean Paul Migne, Paris 1854, col. 1722B–C, on p. 71). 75 Iohannis Sarisberiensis: Epistulae Iohannis et quorundam aliorum contemporaneorum, vol. 2, The Later Letters, ed. by W. J. Millor, H. E. Butler and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), Ep. 201, p. 292. 76 In the light of the Angers titulus calling Bruno a ‘doctor doctorum’, the epitheton ‘master of modern masters’ for Manegold of Lautenbach, much discussed in older research, gains a clearer meaning: Rather than denoting that Manegold was the teacher of the specific ‘moderni magistri’ Anselm of Laon and William of Champeaux, as older scholarship tried to claim, the parallel ‘doctor doctorum’ for Bruno implies that Manegold was simply considered a highly skilled and specialized teacher who taught many future teachers. For Manegold’s life and works, see Wilfried Hartmann, ‘Manegold von Lautenbach und die Anfänge der Frühscholastik’, Deutsches Archiv 26 (1970), 47–149, (with discussion of ‘magister modernorum magistrorum’ at pp. 50, 85–9); Robert Ziomkowski in Manegold of Lautenbach, Liber contra Wolfelmum. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Robert Ziomkowsi, Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations, 1 (Paris–Leuven–Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2002) (Wolfger of Prüfening at p. 131). Most recently, see Irene Caiazzo, ‘Manegold, modernorum magister magistrorum’, in Arts du langage et théologie aux confins des XIe et XIIe siècles: textes, maîtres débats, ed. by Irène Rosier-Catach, Studia artistarum, 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 317–49. 113 This shift from ‘teachers of bishops’ to ‘teachers of teachers’ may seem minimal. Moreover, the formulation ‘doctor doctorum’ should be handled carefully, as it remained first and foremost a designation for Christ (used once in Bruno’s roll77) or at times for the Apostle Paul. Of the three entries that employ the wording ‘doctor doctorum’ in the roll, the titulus from Bernay and the school verses from Nieul-sur-l’Autise evidently use it as a simple description of Bruno’s radiating and exemplary effects, similar to the light and water metaphors discussed above.78 Yet the verses from Angers can hardly be explained away. They seem to contain the earliest known designation of a contemporary teacher as a ‘teacher of teachers’ and therefore as a specialized expert, set apart from older kinds of pedagogues. The other documented instances were written half a century later (just like several other accounts of the new teaching of the schools, mostly connected to the heresy trials mentioned above). In this case, then, the unassuming occasional poetry of the tituli hides a surprisingly significant document of cultural change. If we want to avoid the traditional dichotomy of ‚scholastic’ and ‚monastic’ culture, however, we must resist the temptation to file the Angers titulus away at this point, neatly labeled as an indicator of the first dawn of scholastic culture. The new form of praise for Bruno should certainly be taken as evidence that some communities, among them Angers, were newly aware of the intellectual advances of the early scholastic commentary tradition. But the titulus continues, and an all-too-neat classification of entries is quickly undermined by a rather surprising turn the poem takes. In the lines immediately following the passage discussed so far, it is almost as if the author had paused, taken thought, and then decided to teach future modern readers a lesson about classing his intentions according to their own criteria. Having praised Bruno as a ‘teacher of teachers’, the author of the titulus came to the motif of teaching through word and example. As he wrote explicitly, Bruno taught less through his mental acuity than through his guidance. Addressing Bruno’s conversion, he assessed it as a complete renunciation of the worldly knowledge of the schools: Rectio prudentis superabat acumina mentis: ((VERSE)) Ut documentorum doctor satis extitit horum: His plus perfectam voluit preponere sectam: Nunciat egregiam diuina docendo sophiam. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 77 Rotulus, no. 155. 78 Rotulus, nos 77 (Bernay) and 175 (Nieul-sur-l'Autise). 114 Primaque destruxit: et tanquam friuola duxit. Dux prius erroris / monstrauit iter melioris Postea doctrine / que gaudia dat sine fine. Sed nil mundana sapientia dat / nisi vana: Hec facit elatos pompa / facit illa beatos. Factis complebat operando / quod ore docebat. (‘His careful direction surpassed his acuteness of mind. As quite the learned teacher that he has emerged as being from the official sources, he wanted to found a better school than this. He announces an outstanding type of wisdom while teaching divinity. He destroyed the first teachings and treated them as frivolous. A leader of erring ways first, he then showed the way to a better doctrine that provides joy without end. Worldly wisdom, however, instills nothing but vanity. This makes people proud through ostentation, whereas the other wisdom makes people blessed. He put into concrete action what he taught through the word.’)79 The author thus gives a decidedly higher place (‘superabat’) to Bruno’s exemplary actions than to his intellectual learning. The teaching praised only a moment earlier suddenly appears as mere worldly knowledge, as frivolous, even as ‘error’! The innovative instruction that teachers like Bruno offered is thus very pointedly disqualified, labelled as teaching that cannot lead to blessedness. How are we to interpret this? And how does it connect to Bruno’s life, which, after all, took him from the schools to a religious life? Upon close reading, it appears that the entry’s devaluation of learning, and perhaps specifically of a learning that was portrayed as new and more sophisticated than the established tradition, is establishing an implicit hierarchy of knowledge. The anonymous author first compared Bruno to classical pagan scholars. He then dealt with his specialisation as a Christian teacher of particular intellectual calibre. Last, he described the spiritual and monastic orientation of Bruno’s life and teaching – and it is this ‘teaching office’ that marks the ascent through which Bruno finally reaches heaven. Through the renunciation of worldly knowledge, Bruno had proven himself a more valuable teacher of ‘diuina sophia’. His role as a schoolmaster and early scholastic expert is built up only to be devalued, so that another teaching role can be established. Only in this, the author states, were Bruno’s words about Christian teachings ‘fulfilled’ by deeds. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 79 No. 166; translation slightly adapted from Rodney Lokaj’s translation in this volume. 115 Given this technique, which emphasises Bruno’s conversion to the religious life as a moment of empowering transformation, the entry from Angers becomes an example for new strategies of claiming religious authority rather than intellectual prestige. It fits well into the trend to use conversio to build ‘author-identity‘ (Meier), authorising the writing of books and preaching activities from the later eleventh centuries onward.80 And this authorising mechanism of conversion, amounting to a shift from ‘merely’ intellectual to truly religious authority (the two are clearly not incompatible), in fact emerges in several tituli of Bruno’s roll. To some of his contemporaries, Bruno’s turn to the monastic life apparently constituted a completely consistent application of his theological instruction. As an entry from Bayeux put it, Bruno had ‘fulfilled in deed what he had taught in words’ when he left the world: ‘Qui sectans eremum / propriamque crucem baiulando | Actu compleuit / ore quod edocuit’ (‘Following the monastic life and taking up his own cross, he put into action what he taught in words’).81 The step from intellectual pursuits to a religious life, forming the basis for a higher ‘teaching office’, is several times described as a kind of conversion from theoretical endeavour to lived practice. Again, this shows a hierarchy of values in which the religious authority of a monastic leader is alloted a higher place than the merely intellectual authority of a schoolteacher, even a highly remarkable one. In its modification of the well-known motif of ‘docere verbo et exemplo’, this entry represents a step towards a changed religious ideal of teaching – one that we would also find in later twelfth-century authors. While the motif of teaching by word and example is also found in a general form in various tituli,82 the authors from the monastery of Corbie and from the cathdrals of Bayeux and Coutances specifically characterise Bruno’s conversion as a decisive step in the assumption of a teaching role founded above all on the exemplum.83 This !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 80 Meier, ‘Autorschaft’, p. 214. 81 Rotulus, no. 153 (St Stephen at Bayeux). 82 See, for example, Rotulus, nos 13, 43, 52, 77, 81, 84, 120, 124, 132, 153, 155, and 168. 83 Cf. the titulus from Corbie, Rotulus, no. 84: ‘Divitias Bruno mundanas postposuisti, | Exemploque tuo postponendas docuisti, | Et loca deserti pro Rege poli coluisti, | Dulcibus alloquiis multorum corda rigasti, | Talibus extemplo factis extas imitator | Sanctorum patrum, qui doctrinis viguerunt.’ (‘Bruno, you shunned all worldly riches and taught, by your own example, that they are indeed to be despised. You lived in the desert for the king of Heaven. You melted the heart of many with sweet encouragement. Because of such deeds you stand forthwith as an imitator of the holy fathers who excelled in learning’). See also Rotulus, no. 155, from Coutances: ‘Nec solum verbis / vt durus doctor / acerbis | Perdocet: ast factis persequitur proprijs.’ 116 is another innovation, as the meaning of exemplarity in these entries clearly differs from the older conceptions of the cathedral schools. They had simply connected ‘docere verbo et exemplo’ with any way of life in which a teacher or leader kept to the values he or she taught, and exhibited Christian morals and virtuous conduct. By representing Bruno’s conversion as a perfect way of teaching by example, the authors of various tituli instead contributed to the formation of a new ideal of teaching – an ideal which celebrated conversion to a religious life removed from the world, and thus set far more strenuous religious standards. With this, the entries give us a clearer background for the new concepts of authority and authorship building on conversio. As the examples discussed by Meier relate to authorial selfdescriptions only, the entries concerning Bruno give us additional proof that ideals of teaching and of religious authority built on conversion were highly regarded by a broad spectrum of contemporaries.84 That the Angers titulus thus contains not only one, but two opposing new trends, starting with allusions to new scholastic values and then suddenly turning into a religiously charged eulogy of Bruno’s conversion, is also significant and highly illustrative of early twelfth-century developments: in its careful hierarchy of authority derived from pagan knowledge, Christian teaching and finally religious conversion, titulus no. 166 comes fairly close to concepts which later became typical for monastic authors. But given the fact that it must have been penned by a cathedral cleric at Angers, it undermines rather than strenghtens the idea of cleanly separated ‘monastic’ and ‘scholastic’ cultural patterns. If we attempt to link institutional contexts to certain views of teaching in the rotulus, this impression is borne out: it is clearly not the ‘monastic‘ or ‘school’ status of a community that determined the views of teaching contained in the tituli.85 Though we lack further !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (‘He teaches not only with words, as a harsh teacher does, but also follows through in his deeds’ . My translation.). 84 The date of Bruno’s roll thus highlights Meier’s implicit argument that new strategies of establishing authorship and authority were already being formed in the eleventh century; she includes authors such as Otloh of St Emmeram († c. 1070) or Guibert of Nogent (* 1055 – c. 1125), cf. Meier, ‘Autorschaft’. 85 It has long been recognized as a problem that ‘monastic’ theology is not really bound to specific institutional milieux. On ensuing problems, see already Jean Leclercq, ‘The Renewal of Theology’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Giles Constable and Robert L. Benson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 68–87 and the comments by Mews, ‘Scholastic theology in a monastic milieu’, pp. 222–4 and George Ferzoco, ‘The changing face of tradition: monastic education in the Middle Ages’, in 117 information for the anonymous author of the Angers entry, for example, it can be supposed that he was a cleric and belonged to the circle of Bishop Marbod of Rennes, who had been master at the cathedral school of Angers until he began his pontificate in 1096.86 But the only entry sharing this cleric’s acute perception of a new type of more specialized teaching comes from a Benedictine priory. Their connection is easily explained: this entry, titulus no. 131 from the St Mary at Spalding, England, was evidently an external territory of the Benedictine monastery of St Nicolas at Angers.87 It must thus have been personal networks that carried certain views from the cathedral at Angers to Spalding via the monks of St Nicholas at Angers. Such networks of clerics and monks, typical for their time, must also have formed the channels through which Bruno’s reputation reached the north of England, as is indicated by the presence of an entry from York.88 As we see both monks and clerks subscribing to the newly sharpened perception of early scholastic theological teaching in Bruno’s roll, we can detect an Angers-based ‘community of learning’, a group sharing the same ideals, within this network.89 Other tituli can also be explained using this model: On the other end, cathedral communities with wellknown and important schools (for example Bruno’s former domain of Reims besides Angers, with its reputation for the pagan authors of antiquity) underlined not so much Bruno’s intellectual prowess as precisely his renunciation of worldly ‘teaching’: besides the monastery of Corbie it was the cathedral communities of Angers, Bayeux and Coutances (the !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Medieval Monastic Education, ed. by George Ferzoco & Carolyn Muessig (London – New York: Leicester University Press, 2000), pp. 1–6. 86 On Marbod’s circle in Angers, cf. Bulst, Studien, especially pp. 231–4, and Jean Vezin, Les scriptoria d’Angers au XIe siècle (Paris: Champion, 1974). 87 In the Rotulus, no. 131, it is called ‘Titulus sancte marie Spalinge ecclesie sancti Nicolai Andegauis’. 88 Rotulus, no. 136: ‘Fama prius nobis retulit / quam litera vestra | Non de morte quidem: sed bonitate viri.’ (‘Word had reached us before your letter not about his death, but certainly about his goodness.’). 89 The term ‘communities of learning‘ is borrowed from Constant Mews who established it for university and school history in his article ‘Communautés de Savoirs. Écoles et collèges à Paris au XIIIe siècle’, Revue de Synthèse 129.4 (2008), 485–507. His argument was that typical perspectives which see ‘the university’ as a unit fail to explain many of its developments, which in fact result from dynamics between various groups within and outside the university. Further research has demonstrated that this can be adapted to explain intellectual and cultural change in other groups seen as coherent, e.g. religious communities and courts or cities besides schools), cf. also Communities of Learning. Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100–1500, ed. by Constant J. Mews and J. N. Crossley, Europa Sacra, 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). 118 latter two in Normandy, with its strong tradition of monastic reform) that saw a new kind of exemplarity in Bruno. We thus do see shared perceptions, but it is clear that personal networks – who might be influenced by media like the rotulus – did more to shape them than institutional contexts. A close reading of the ideals ascribed to Bruno as a ‘teacher’ thus reveals quite a lot of the complexity and variety of conceptions of teaching at the turn of the twelfth century. As Constable and Excoffon have observed, Bruno was frequently portrayed as a teacher, not least by communities which themselves had a school.90 But read carefully, Bruno’s mortuary roll gives us detailed evidence that various groups and networks in 1101/2 were beginning to see and describe ‘teaching’ and ‘teachers’ in widely diverging ways. To cite one of the roll’s many beautiful metaphors, Bruno emerges as a ‘gemma sophie’ or gemstone:91 while his scholarly radiance was very soon to be outshined, close study of the laudatory verses about him generates an image that is intriguing in its many glittering facets. The first important conclusion emerging from their study is simply that Bruno’s teaching activities could appear in terms that were fairly traditional. This is quite relevant for our overall perception of cultural change in the long twelfth century: as late as 1101, French ecclesiastical communities applied perceptions and values to the description of Bruno as a teacher that would have been equally understandable and applicable in the ninth and tenth centuries. While debates on new methods of applying dialectics to the sacred texts had already become quite intricate, and schools were multiplying, important teachers like Bruno or Anselm of Laon continued to be measured by traditional ideals, at least outside of the schools. The personal, often highly emotional testimonies of former students appear to have been quite important in documenting the stature of Bruno as a teacher and authenticating his merits for contemporaries who had not known him in person. Regarding the innovations in ideals of teachers and teaching, the clearsighted representation of Bruno’s professionalism as a ‘teacher of teachers’ only understood by clever men in the entry from Angers appears quite striking. As is attested by such entries, authors could and did incorporate new nuances and metaphors into the often underrated genre of occasional poetry. And the fact that the author of the Angers titulus no longer described Bruno’s teaching as ‚milk and bread’ for everyone, but as an unusually difficult, specialized matter probably helped to make such innovation acceptable. After all, contemporaries would !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 90 Excoffon, ‘Le rouleau’, p. 12. 91 See, for example, Rotulus, no. 74. 119 have had to get used to new forms of learning in the twelfth century – and figures like Bruno, who conformed to older ideals of teaching yet also popularized new forms of theology, can be seen as important influences in this process of cultural accommodation. Bruno’s mortuary roll in fact illustrates beautifully how this process worked on a geographical and institutional level: the connections between various entries highlight the role of individual networks and authenticating personal statements in negotiating and evaluating cultural change. If we avoid broad categories and manage to find evidence for such connections at the individual level, the various monastic and clerical scholarly networks of the early and high Middle Ages emerge as a web of ‘communities of learning’, small-scale individual groups and networks bound together by shared values, perceptions and practices.92 We can assume, however, that such small units debated issues of epistemological and social significance, eventually generating or shaping overarching ‘cultures of authority’, cultural patterns of intellectual and religious authority that could run across various institutional boundaries.93 Once accepted in many smaller communities, such cultures of authority could come to exert their own force. For example, ‘scholastic theology’ as a method of studying texts was gradually defined and recognized (if not universally liked) across communities of monks, clerics, regular canons and even laypeople.94 The tituli in Bruno’s !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 92 For possible approaches to define specific ‘communities of learning’, cf. Mews, ‘Communautés de savoirs’ but also Carolyn A. Muessig, ‘Communities of Discourse: Religious Authority and the Role of Holy Women in the Later Middle Ages’, in Women and experience in later medieval writing. Reading the book of life, ed. by Anneke Mulder-Bakker and Liz Herbert McAvoy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 65–82 and my Kulturen des Lehrens, esp. pp. 1190f. 93 The term ‘cultures of authority’ is borrowed from Jan Ziolkowski, ‘Cultures of Authority in the Long Twelfth Century’, Journal of English and Germanic philology, 108. 4 (2009), p. 421–48, though used in a broader sense. Like the term ‘overarching cultural patterns’, it approximates the concept of ‘Wissenskulturen’, (‘cultures of learning’) as elaborated in German language research, i.e. cultural communities bound together by shared sets of concepts and social practices. See e.g. Wolfgang Detel and Claus Zittel, ‘Introduction: Ideals and Cultures of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, in Wissensideale und Wissenskulturen in der frühen Neuzeit. Ideals and Cultures of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Wolfgang Detel and Claus Zittel, Wissenskultur und gesellschaftlicher Wandel, 2 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002), pp. 7–21. 94 ‘Scholastic’ culture has traditionally been tied to a method of studying and organizing texts, whatever the actual definition of this method (see the overview in Martin Grabmann, Geschichte der scholastischen Methode, 2 vols (Freiburg: Herdersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1909, reprint 1988), vol. 1, pp. 28–37. 120 mortuary roll which show a new appreciation of Bruno as a scholastic expert – clearly present if small in number – appear as agents of this cultural diffusion. Some issues, on the other hand, did not lend themselves to easy resolution, and so certain intellectual and religious stances remained debated. It is these more fragmented cultural trends that become visible in the varying views of religious authority in Bruno’s rotulus, across many tituli celebrating Bruno as religious teacher, hermit or founder of a new religious order. A cluster of authors (in Angers, Corbie, Bayeux and Coutances) had apparently developed strong ideas about religious authority based on conversion, and even partly linked this to a hierarchy of forms of knowledge. Other tituli emphasised other points, for example Bruno’s asceticism. But everyone, from cathedral communities to Benedictine houses to the respectable number of houses of regular canons we find on the roll, shows great respect for the sweeping trend towards religious renewal that made itself felt in France and elsewhere in the years around 1101. It is this general interest in religious values that we find in Bruno’s roll, and not merely interest in a ‘monastic’ renewal. If we could bring ourselves to leave broad dichotomies like ‘monastic’ and ‘scholastic’ learning behind, renewed study of the interrelations of intellectual and religious authority in the long twelfth century might eventually overcome the old idea of a unified new culture of the schools supplanting a unified older monastic or religious culture. As the rotulus attests, various communities found new answers to intellectual and religious problems, among them schools of various types but also monks and nuns from the old Benedictine and new Cluniac and Cistercian orders, besides different forms and networks of the new canons regular like those of St Victor or St Ruf. In their debates, which continued throughout the twelfth century and beyond, particular ideals of learning and concepts of authorship and teachership kept being reformulated, not least to distinguish individuals and groups from competing communities. In this process, groups we call ‘scholastic’ and ‘monastic’ communities of learning emerged in close relation to each other. Rather than representing ‘old’ and ‘new’ learning, new intellectual and new religious stances appear more or less as siblings – and often as attuned to and as critical of each other as siblings are. Further research would do well investigate both the differences and the similarities in such negotiated concepts of authority, for example among the various networks of regular canons of the high Middle Ages, which would lend themselves exceptionally well to comparative study. After all, if we looked anew at these and other cultures of authority, beyond the trajectories defined by older schemes of classification, more surprising little gems like the Angers titulus would probably emerge. 121 122