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[German Version] Seat of a bishopric in the county of Kent, England. Situated at an important road junction during the Roman period, Canterbury became the main settlement of the Cantiani in the first century ce and shows evidence of Christianization from the beginning of the 4th century. The conquest of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons dealt a severe blow to the development of the city. King Ethelbert made it the capital of the kingdom of Kent, while the Roman monk Augustine of Canterbury, a missionary dispatched by Pop…

[German Version] (1168, Mantua? – 1249, Budriolo, Romagna). A layperson who led a life of penitence as a hermit beginning in 1209 in the small village of Budriolo on the northern margins of the Apennines. He founded a hermit community named after him in 1217, at the earliest; it lived according to the Augustinian Rule (Augustine, rule of) and became an order active in pastoral care in northern Italy which was incorporated in 1256 into the order of the Augustinian Hermits. Ulrich Köpf Bibliography K. Elm, “Italienische Eremitengemeinschaften des 12. und 13. Jh.,” in idem, Vitasfratrum, 199…

[German Version] Genoa is the capital of the Liguria region and a major Italian port on the Gulf of Genoa, on the southern escarpment of the Ligurian Apennines (1998: 642,000 inhabitants). Settled since the 5th century bce by the Ligurians, then a Roman municipium, whose first Christian bishop is attested in 381 ce (it belonged to Milan until 1133, since then an archdiocese). Already a center of trade in the 6th century, the now wealthy Genoa came in the 11th century into competition with Pisa, emerging victorious, after a long struggle, in 1284.…

[German Version] (Nov 26, 1221, Toledo – Apr 4, 1284, Seville), king of Castile and Leon from 1252 to 1284. As the grandson of Philip of Swabia, he claimed the Hohenstaufen throne and embarked on an imperialistic policy embracing the entire Mediterranean region. His political ambitions came to nothing; he was more important as a lawgiver who sought to create a uniform code of law for Castile, historian (he wrote or directed the writing of a history of Spain, Estoria de España, and a universal history, Grande e general estoria), and promoter of astronomy, music, and poetry (427 Cantigas de S.…

[German Version] (c. 1300, northern Germany – Apr 10, 1378, Straßburg). Initially a Dominican, he was a Carthusian after c. 1340 (Straßburg, Coblenz [Prior], Mainz, Straßburg). His major work is the Vita Jesu Christi, a work based on the gospel harmony of Zacharias of Besançon (Chrysopolitanus, first half of the 12th cent.), early church authors and medieval, meditative and historicizing Jesus literature. It does not simply recount Jesus' life, but seeks, in individual sections (structured according to the scheme of lectio, meditatio and oratio and enriched by introductions an…

[German Version] (1248/1249, Foligno – Jan 4, 1309, Foligno). Influenced by the Franciscans at an early age, as a wife and mother Angela experienced a conversion to a life of asceticism and charity during a pilgrimage to Assisi in 1285. In 1291, after her immediate family had died, she joined the Franciscan Third Order. She lived with a female companion; a Franciscan who was related to her served as her confessor. At times a loose circle of disciples (including Ubertino of Casale) gathered about the magistra theologorum. Her confessor translated her ve…

[German Version] (Petrus; Manducator; early 12th cent., Troyes – 1178/1179, Paris). After studies in Troyes (where he became dean of the cathedral in 1147 and a canon of the abbey of St. Loup), Tours, and Paris, in 1159 he succeeded his teacher Peter Lombard at the cathedral school in Paris. In 1168 he became chancellor of Notre-Dame. During his last years, he lived in the Augustinian abbey of St. Victor. From his time as a teacher, many works have survived, mostly never published in print: glosses (Glossa ordinaria) on the Gospels, a commentary on the Psalms and (the first) on the Sentences of…

[German Version] (1026, Bavaria – Jul 5, 1091, Hirsau), who was of noble birth, was entrusted by his parents as an oblate (I) to the Benedictine abbey of St. Emmeram in Regensburg, where he was taught by Otloh of St. Emmeram. While still in Regensburg, he wrote two works on the quadrivium in dialogue form: De astronomia and De musica. In 1069 he was called to Hirsau as abbot (consecrated in 1071). He initially reformed the abbey after the model of St. Emmeram, which had adopted the reforms of Gorze Abbey; after 1076, however, Hirsau came under the influ…

[German Version] (teachers of the church) is an honorific term first used by Bishop Licinianus of Cartagena toward the end of the 6th century (Gregory the Great, Ep. 1.41a). The canonization of theological authorities in Late Antiquity formed a circle of three liturgically venerated Doctores ecclesiae in the Eastern Church (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom) and of four in the West (first around 800: Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, Jerome, Gregory I the Great). Boniface VIII first officially established ¶ the names of the four Latin egregii Doctores ecclesi…

[German Version] is a form of Christian devotion centered on the passion and crucifixion of Jesus (Passion/Passion traditions). Commemoration of the end of Jesus’ life was always a living presence in the Christian community – despite the criticism of his manner of death by Jews and pagans (1 Cor 1:23), which in turn fostered the Christian interpretation of the cross (Cross/Crucifixion) as a trophy while also discouraging iconographic representation of the crucifixion until the early 5th century. E…

[German Version] ( conversi) are, in the narrower sense, members of a religious community who are not ordained. In the course of history, however, the name fratres laici or conversi has designated various groups of persons. In the early medieval period, conversi were monks who, in contrast to ( pueri) oblati (Oblates: I) who were consigned to a monastery already as children, entered the monastery only as adults. In addition to this so-called “older institution of conversi,” a “younger institution of conversi” arose in the 11th century. It included members of the monastic familia who wer…

[German Version] The suburbicarian dioceses are those in the region adjacent ( suburbium) to Rome. Most have had a checkered history: Albano, Frascati (replacing Tusculum, which replaced Labicum and was de facto an episcopal see from 1058 to 1197, recognized nominally until 1537), Ostia, Palestrina, Porto (united the Santa Rufina [Silva Candida] by Callistus II), Sabina (the result of incorporating the see of Nomentum into the see of Forum Novum; united ¶ with Poggio Mirteto in 1925), Velletri (united with Ostia in 1150, separated once more in 1914, and united with …

[German Version] (died 1115, Antwerp), itinerant ascetic preacher, probably a layman, for some time a member of the circle of Count Robert II of Flanders. In 1112 he is ¶ said to have been in Rome trying to have the islands at the mouth of the Scheldt (Zeeland) removed from the bishopric of Utrecht and placed under the bishopric of Thérouanne (under the archbishopric of Reims). On his return journey, he was imprisoned by the archbishop of Cologne and charged with heresy by the Utrecht cathedral clergy. The stereotyped accusa…

[German Version] village in Latium, in the valley of the Aniene east of Rome. Here Benedict of Nursia is said to have lived in a cave (Sacro Speco) as a hermit and to have later joined with companions to form a monastic settlement in rooms of a former villa of the emperor Nero (monastery of San Clemente). In the years that followed, he is said to have founded ten additional monasteries before going to Monte Cassino in 529. Two of them are still standing today: San Benedetto (Sacro Speco) and, low…

[German Version] I. The term observantia denoted in classical Latin the due veneration of other human beings, especially those who surpass us in age, wisdom, and worth (Cic. De inventione 2.66, 161). In Latin of the imperial period it also came to mean respect for customs and laws (on the relationship with religio, cf. 2 Macc 6:11, Vulgate). From the early Middle Ages, the term was especially applied to religious behavior understood as compliance with divine commands: on the one hand, with regard to keeping church rules in general, especially tho…

[German Version] was the most important translator north of the Alps in the 12th century; he was active for some time in Poitiers. Supported by John of Salisbury and the Abbey St. Denis in Paris, he translated the works and letters of Pseudo- Dionysius Areopagita from Greek into Latin, while avoiding grecisms. The preparation for this work was a commentary on the Hierarchia caelestis. His translations were widely used, especially in the 13th century. Ulrich Köpf Bibliography M. Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, vol. I, 1926, 454–460 W. Berschin, Griechisch-lateinisches Mit…

[German Version] I. Early Research At the dawn of the 21st century, a history of piety is more a desideratum than a reality, especially in Protestantism. In the 19th century, the notion of piety as defined in its modern sense by Pietism, J.W. v. Goethe, and Romanticism and grounded theologically by F.D.E. Schleiermacher did not lead to academic study of the history of piety. To this day, religious scholarship avoids the term; there is no lemma Frömmigkeit in HRWG II, 1990. Not until the end of the 19th century did church history deal with the history of piety, primarily …

[German Version] (c. 1045, Arbrissel near Rennes – Feb 25, 1116, Priory of Orsan-en-Berry), son of a hereditary priest of Arbrissel. After studies in Paris, Robert entered the service of Bishop Silvester of Rennes as a clerk. After further studies in Angers (from 1078) he experienced a conversion to ascetic life, and withdrew as a hermit to the Forest of Craon (Anjou), where he founded a collegiate establishment in 1095, leaving it in order to travel through the countryside preaching repentance (f…

[German Version] An anonymous treatise from the late 14th century, preserved in eight medieval manuscripts. Luther arranged the first printing in 1516, based on a fragment subsequently lost (WA 1, 152f.: “a noble little spiritual book”) and the second in 1518, based on a complete manuscript (likewise lost; WA 1, 375–379: “Eyn deutsch Theologia”). After the Augsburg reprint in 1518 (“Theologia Teütsch”), the title Theologia deutsch became established. The first modern printing appeared in 1843, based on a manuscript formerly in Bronnbach, whose prologue identi…

[German Version] The notion of a new Jerusalem, an eschatological city of God on Mount Zion is already developed in the Old Testament (Zion Pss; Isa 28:16; 54:11f.; Ezek 40:2; 48:30–35; etc.); it was further nurtured by early Judaism (Qumran; 4 Ezra; etc.). The tendency to separate the heavenly Jerusalem from the earthly one, already apparent in the OT texts, became stronger, especially after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 ce. Thus 2 Bar. 4:2–6 states that the true Jerusalem intended by God is not the visible city; it is instead the preexistent Jerusalem, …