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[German Version] The Ambrosians are a religious community first mentioned in 1375 in a bull of Gregory XI; they are traced to three nobles from Milan. The monasteries they established lived independently according to the Augustinian rule (Augustine, Rule of) and followed the Ambrosian rite in worship; they were united by Eugene IV with other groups as the Congregatio fratrum S. Ambrosii ad nemus Mediolanensis in 1441. After varying fortunes – especially in the schism of monasteries which adopted the Roman rite, which associated in 1496 with the Apostolic Brothers as the Congregatio S. …

[German Version] (Fratres Pontis). Brotherhoods for building and maintaining bridges over rivers and the hospitals, chapels and cemeteries associated with them. Active from the 12th on into the 15th cen-turies, especially in southern France (Rhône valley); supposedly founded here by St. Bénézet (1184/ 85), to whom the bridge of Avignon is attributed. Ulrich Köpf Bibliography P. Péano, “Pontieri,” DIP VII, 1983, 85–92 idem, “Benedetto di Hermillon,” DIP I, 1974, 1359f.

[German Version] (died c. 617 [?]) is said to have lived as a hermit in the hill country between the Hunsrück and the Palatine Forest in the time of Bishop Magnerich of Trier (died after 587). The 10th-century calendar of Stavelot Abbey is the earliest evidence of cultic veneration of his grave at the site later named Sankt Wendel; its late Gothic hall church (consecrated in 1360) was built to enshrine his relics. Wendelin has been venerated since the late Middle Ages as the patron saint of herdsmen and cattle. Ulrich Köpf Bibliography A. Selzer, St. Wendelin, 1936, 21962 (Ger.).

[German Version] (602, Tarsus – Sep 19, 690, Canterbury [?]). When Wighard, who had been appointed to succeed Archbishop Deusdedit of Canterbury, died in Rome in 667, Abbot Hadrian of Hiridanum Abbey near Naples suggested the learned Greek monk Theodore of Tarsus; Pope Vitalinus consecrated him as archbishop in 668. He was living at the time in a community of Cilician monks in the Roman abbey of St. Anastasius ad Aquas Salvias (later Tre Fontane) on the southern edge of the city. There is no relia…

[German Version] The concept of a théologie monastique was introduced by J. Leclercq, in a monograph on Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny ( Pierre le Vénérable, 1946); he subsequently developed it in studies of the monastic literature of the High Middle Ages, especially the work of Bernard of Clairvaux ( L'amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu, 1957; ET: The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 1961). Since then it has proved its value as a key concept for understanding the theology of Bernard and medieval theology in general. It has long since been accepte…

[German Version] The Wilhelmite order goes back to a hermitage (Monasticism: III) founded in Tuscany in the mid-12th century. Its founder is said to have been a French noble named Wilhelm, a former soldier who settled near Pisa in 1145 after several pilgrimages; later he moved to the mountain valley of Malavalle, near Siena, where he lived a strictly ascetic life as a hermit with a single companion (later joined by a second). After his death on Feb 10, 1157, a hermitage grew up at his burial site;…

[German Version] I. History of the Discipline – II. Church History I. History of the Discipline Geography has come a long way from its beginnings in the mythical worldview (ANE creation accounts, early Greek philosophical speculation) and in the pragmatic exploration of the world (travel reports of merchants) to its development as an exact science. In antiquity, it was understood as a comprehensive lore of the earth and its inhabitants. The earliest accounts took the form of descriptions of coasts (Periplus et al.), which were soon joined by geographic and ethnographic excu…

[German Version] A lay abbot in the narrow sense, is a layman who is entrusted with the conduct and use of a monastery without being a member of its convent or even a monk. In the Frankish Empire of the 9th and 10th centuries and its successor states, members of the nobility were particularly frequently vested with this function. In a secondary meaning, lay abbot also designates the clerical holder of a commendam, who does not have the status of a monk (frequent from the High Middle Ages to the early modern period). Ulrich Köpf Bibliography F.J. Felten, Äbte und Laienäbte im Frankenreich, 1980.

[German Version] (Oct 19, 1433, Figline Valdarno, Italy – Oct 1, 1499, Careggi, Italy). Ficino was the son of the personal physician of Cosimo de' Medici; the latter supported Ficino and prompted him to change his course of studies from medicine to philosophy. He acquired an extremely thorough knowledge of Greek and produced annotated translations of esp. Plato (1463–1469), Plotinus (1484–1486), and a series of other neo-Platonic authors. In Florence he founded a Platonic Academy (I, 5) in which h…

[German Version] The principality of Liechtenstein is a microstate (160 km2) between the Swiss cantons of Sankt Gallen and Grisons (Graubünden) to the west and the Austrian state of Vorarlberg to the east. It is a hereditary constitutional monarchy with a population of 35,300 (2007), 80% Catholic, 7.4% Protestant (1996). Rulers of Liechtenstein are first mentioned in the 12th century, with two lines possessing lands in Styria and Moravia. When the Styrian line died out in 1619, the Moravian lord of Nikols…

[German Version] is a branch of theology that judges differences between various Christian Churches from a polemical and argumentative point of view rather than analyzing them from a historically critical perspective. The “controversy” involved relates both to the object and the method of this discipline. Theological positions are discussed when they become significant in disturbing or dividing the church community, and not so much as contributions to an open scholarly debate. I. Although the term controversial theology did not become common until the 20th century, …

[German Version] (Petrus; first half of the 12th cent., Hosdenc, near Beauvais – 1197, Cistercian abbey of Longpont, near Soissons). Sometime before 1173, after studying at the cathedral school in Reims, he began teaching at the cathedral school in Paris as a canon; in 1183 he was appointed to the post of cantor. He refused his election as bishop of Paris in 1196. In 1197 he was elected dean of the cathedral chapter of Reims, but died on his journey from Paris. Numerous works, some still unpublished, bear witness to his teaching activity: glosses on the Old and New Testaments; Distinctiones or S…

[German Version] were educational originally institutions for training clergy, administered by the episcopal curia. In the Early Church, learned bishops (preeminently Augustine) already gave instruction to their clergy. From the second Council of Toledo (527/531) onward, the Church repeatedly urged the establishment of episcopal schools; in 789, they were ¶ enjoined by Charlemagne, and in 1076 by Gregory VII. Nevertheless, down to the Reformation numerous councils deplored the educational level of the clergy – a sign of the great dispari…

[German Version] In classical Latin, the verb reformare and the associated noun reformatio already denoted a transformation for the better: restoration of an earlier human condition, since lost (morality e.g. Pliny the Younger Panegyricus 53.1: “corruptos depravatosque mores . . . reformare et corrigere”; bodily health e.g. Theodorus Priscianus Euproiston 1.38: “oculorum aciem reformare”), or physical objects (e.g. Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium 40.5: “templum reformare”) or improvement without regard to the past (e.g. Sen. Ep. 58.26: “reformatio morum”; Ep. 94.5…

[German Version] Recluses or hermits are men and women who do penance by shutting themselves (or having themselves shut) into a cell, either for a specific period (usually at the beginning of their lives as ascetics) or for the rest of their lives. This extreme form of asceticism surfaced in the Early Church in all regions of the East where there were monastic settlements (e.g. in Egypt, John of Lycopolis; esp. common in Syria) and came to the West in the 6th century, but it reached its climax in …

[German Version] The Vikings were marauding seafarers from Scandinavia, who plagued large sections of Europe from ¶ the 8th century to the 11th century. Swedes descended on Novgorod and Kiev via the Gulf of Finland, advancing as far as the Black Sea (Varangians). Norwegians conquered Scotland and the northern and eastern parts of Ireland, settled Iceland, and sailed as far as Greenland, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia. Danes settled between the mouths of the Oder and Vistula and landed on the southern and eastern …

[German Version] (after 841 – May 2, probably 908, Paris), a monk from the monastery of St. Germain in Auxerre, where he succeeded his teacher Heiric ( Heiricus). Remigius was involved in the renewal of the school of Reims around 893 and taught in Paris from 900 onward. He authored more than 20 works that were widely read in the Middle Ages, although most of them have never been printed: commentaries on ancient and early medieval grammarians and poets, on Genesis and the Psalms, and on Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae and Opuscula sacra; he also wrote an exposition of the mass. Ulrich Kö…

[German Version] Authoritative dicta with significant content (Gk γνώμη/ gnṓmē [earliest: Sophoc. Ajax 1091] alongside more specialized terms; Lat. sententia [since Cicero]) were already in use in pre-Christian times in literary and rhetorical contexts; later they were collected for more convenient use ( gnomology, similar to anthology [Florilegium]). Examples are Μενάνδρου γνώμαι μονόστιχοι/ Menándrou gnṓmai monóstichoi ¶ (probably begun in the 2nd cent. bce; continued into the Byzantine period) and Σέξτου γνώμαι/ Séxtou gnṓmai (c. 200 ce). During the Trinitarian contr…

[German Version] Latin patrocinium denotes a proprietary relationship, usually established by consecration, and the consequent protective function of a patron (usually a saint) with respect to a church or altar, a country, a city or bishopric, a group (social class, noble family, profession, guild, confraternity, university, monastery, religious congregation, or the like), or an individual. In return for protection, the patron is honored by the faithful in a wide variety of liturgical and paraliturgical forms. ¶ The ancient Roman term patronus first appears as a term for a …

[German Version] From the late 14th century, reforming groups or tendencies within monasticism (III, 4.b), especially in the mendicant orders and most especially among the Franciscans, were called observants ( observantes, fratres de observantia etc.). In internal debates ¶ about the right way of life, they opposed easing of the rule and other kinds of adaptation that had crept in (Conventuals), and advocated strict following of the rules as rigorously interpreted, together with other prescriptions ( observantia regularis etc., Observance). In this, restoration of the vita commu…