Search

[German Version] (real name: Wynfrith; c. 672/675, near Exeter [on the border between Anglo-Saxon and ¶ British England – Jun 5, 754, Dokkum, Friesland). Educated at Exeter and Nursling monasteries, where he was teacher at the monastery school, he decided at the age of 40 to go to the continent as a missionary. The first mission to the Frisians in 716 was unsuccessful owing to uncertain political …

[German Version] (Bruno von Egisheim, born 1002; pope Feb 12, 1049 – Apr 19, 1054). Court chaplain to Conrad II, then bishop of Toul (1026–1051), Leo was appointed pope in December of 1048 by Henry III. After election by the clergy and people of Rome, he was enthroned on Feb 12, 1049. In numerous synods, Leo urged the need for reforming the church (elimination of simony and concubinage). On his journeys in Italy, France, and Germany, he presided over many dedications of churches and translations o…

[German Version] (Dec 3, 741 – Mar 15, 752) made an alliance with the Franks, but also sought an accommodation with the Lombards and Byzantium (Constantinople). A Roman council in 743 dealt with disciplinary questions and matrimonial law; a synod in 745 condemned the heretics Aldebert and Clement. In 747 Zacharias wrote to Pippin, the mayor of the palace, regarding the Christian life of clergy and laity (M. Tangl, ed., MGH.Ep 1, 1916, 479–487); he gave Boniface advice on church discipline. Scholar…

[German Version] Some textual traditions of the Historia Hierosolymitanae expeditionis (probably contemporary with the events it describes) name an otherwise unknown canonicus Albertus Aquensis ecclesiae as its author. Books 1–6 describe the First Crusade, including the preliminary People's Crusade; books 7–11 recount the history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem down to 1111. Book 12 briefly sketches events from 1…

[German Version] (714, Chasseneuil-du-Poitou near Poitiers – Jun 20, 840, near Ingelheim am Rhein). The third son of Charlemagne, Louis was appointed king of Aquitaine in 781 and coemperor in 813; he became sole emperor in 814. Initially he ruled energetically and decisively (Capitularies, reform of the rules for canons and monks with Benedict of Aniane). The ordinatio of 817 governing succession was intended to assure the unity of the empire: the younger sons were made subordinate to Lothar, the eldest. In 829, when Louis awarded a separate kingdom w…

[German Version] I. History – II. Carolingian Reforms (Church and Educational Reform) – III. Carolingian Art I. History This family, named, since the 12th century, after its most important representative, Charlemagne, stems from the Maas-Mosel region. The first known Carolingian was bishop Arnulf of Metz (died 640), venerated as a saint. His contemporary was Pippin the Elder (died 640), the majordomo of the king of Austrasia in 624/625. His daughter Begga married Arnulf's son, Ansegisel. The …

[German Version] (c. 1000 – Mar 16, 1072) was a member of the family of the count of Goseck. From 1032 on, he was cathedral provost in Halberstadt and was elevated to archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen in 1043 by Henry III (Hamburg, Bremen). He was responsible for the expansion of sovereign rule in his diocese. From 1062 to 1066, he was influential on imperial polic…

[German Version] Salomo III, abbot of Saint Gall Abbey and bishop of Constance (c. 860–919). Of noble descent, Salomo was placed in the abbey of Saint Gall as a child; there he and his brother Waldo (bishop of Freising from 883 to 906) were students of Notker Balbulus. In 890 King Arnulf of Carinthia made him bishop of Constance, an office previously held by his great-uncle Salomo I from 838/839 to 871 and his uncle Salomo II from 875 to 889. He had already been active in royal affairs under Charl…

[German Version] (c. 1010 – Aug 8, 1091) was from a landed noble family in Saxony and Bavaria. Altmann was cathedral scholar in Paderborn, diocesan provost in Aachen and court chaplain of Henry III and Empress Agnes; in 1065 he became bishop of Passau. His interest in the reform of the secular clergy was evident in the foundation of…

[German Version] (c. 770, Maingau – Mar 14, 840, Seligenstadt), from a noble family, reared in the Fulda monastery (but not a monk), where he was a scribe. From early 796, he was at the court of Charlemagne, where he received the name Beseleel (Bezalel; cf. Exod 35:30ff.). The name refers to his role as court architect. Louis I, the Pious, tried to keep him at court, and, in 815, transferred seven monas…

[German Version] (Apr 10, 1191 – Jan 8, 1198). Born in Rome around 1105/1106, Celestine (Giacinto [Hyacinthus] Bobone [later Orsini]) studied in Paris under Peter Abelard (c. 1130) and defended him against the accusations brought forward by Bernard of Clairvaux at the Synod of Sens (1140). In 1143/1144, Celestine II appointed him cardinal-deacon at the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. In the following years, he undertook several journeys as a papal legate (esp. to Spain) and…

[German Version] (born c. 1060, died before 1145), canon and schoolmaster of the cathedral of Liège; retired to Cluny as a monk in 1121. His De sacramentis corporis et sanguinis Domini, directed against the sacramental teaching of Berengar of Tours, maintains the validity of sacraments administered by Simoniacs (Simony). In canon law, his treatise De misericordia et iustitia was used in Gratian's Decretum ( Corpus Iuris Canonici ). Not content simply to assemble texts bearing on questions of canon law, it seeks to interpret them using the new scholastic method. Wilfried Hartmann Biblio…

[German Version] (940/945 - Nov 13, 1004) was from 965 on the head of the school and the abbot from 988 on of the monastery of Fleury (St.-Benoît-sur-Loire, east of Orléans). Abbo authored, inter alia, lives of saints and a collection of canons, as well as works of grammar and chronology whose major significance for the scholarship of his time only became evident through the recently published critical editions. In chu…

[German Version] From the 3rd to the 5th century, “Franci” was the collective designation for the opponents of Rome on the lower Rhine and around the confluence of the Rhine, Maas, and Schelde rivers. The meaning of the name is unclear (from Frakka, “spear,” or from Indo-Germanic * preg, “bold, courageous”?). During the waning 3rd century, Frankish groups began trickling into northern Gaul. In 355 the Franks destroyed Cologne. From the second half of the 4th century, Franks are attested in high military positions in the Roman army (e.g. Arbog…

[German Version] (Hrabanus; c. 780, Mainz – Feb 4, 856, Winkel near Mainz), came from a noble family in the mid-Rhine area. He lived as a monk in the monastery at Fulda, was consecrated deacon in 801, studied for a brief period under Alcuin in Tours from 800, then taught in Fulda, was consecrated priest in 814, became abbot of Fulda in 822, resigned as abbot in 842 after Emperor Lothar I was defeated by Louis the German and Charles the Bald, then was elevated to ¶ archbishop of Mainz in 847 by Louis the German. As abbot of Fulda, Rabanus not only composed numerous poems, letters, …

[German Version] (c. 990 – Apr 6, 1031). The son of the count palatine of Bavaria, Aribo was also related to Emperor Henry II. As archbishop of Mainz (1021–1032), he convened several imperial and provincial synods (1023 Mainz and Seligenstadt, 1024 Höchst, 1025 Grone, 1026 Seligenstadt, 1027 Frankfurt, 1028 Geisleden and Pöhlde), at which he attempted to overt…

[German Version] (after 700 in Ireland – Nov 27, 784, Salzburg). Virgil arrived in France in 743, probably from the monastery of Iona. He was active in Bavaria in 745/746 and became bishop of Salzburg in 749; he is buried in the cathedral he built. He came into conflict with Boniface for refusing to repeat a baptism that a Bavarian priest had performed using a grammatically defective formula. Boniface denounced Virgil to Pope Zacharias as a heretic for believing in the antipodes. Today most schola…

[German Version] (Dec 24, 1046 – Oct 9, 1047), actually Suidger, was born into the Saxon nobility. He held the office of canon in Halberstadt, where he became court chaplain in 1035. He was appointed bishop of Bamberg in 1040 and elevated to the papacy following the deposition of Gregory VI and Benedict IX. On Christmas Day 1046, he crowned Henry III as emperor. Early in January 1047, at a reform synod in Rome, he initiated the campain to suppress simony. He was buried in Bamberg, where he had remained bishop. Wilfried Hartmann

[German Version] Ever since the Catalogus illustrium virorum Germaniae (1495) of J. Trithemius, Haymo of Halberstadt, bishop from 840 to 853, has been identified as the author of numerous biblical commentaries, printed in volumes 116–118 of Migne's PL. Probably, however, not a few of these commentaries were actually written by Haymo of Auxerre, who headed an important school from the middle through the second half of the 9th century at the Abbey of St. Germain in Auxerre. Today the widely disseminated c…

[German Version] (c. 1010 – Dec 4, 1075). Scion of an influential Swabian family, Anno was educated in the cathedral school at Bamberg, where he later taught; in 1046 he became court chaplain to the emperor Henry III, who made him archbishop of Cologne (1056–1075). After Henry's death, he sought to influence the policies of the regent, the empress Agnes. In 10…