Hathwig (food)
Hathwig (also often Hadwig in literature , historically also Hathauuiga, Hathuwi and Hathuwig; * unknown, † on July 18 of an unknown year) was abbess of the Essen monastery . Their exact government dates are unknown. During her term of office there was a fire that damaged the collegiate church and destroyed the collegiate archive. Hathwig was actively involved in the reconstruction, which laid the foundation for the monastery to flourish under the abbesses Mathilde , Sophia and Theophanu .
Sources
As Essen's abbess, Hathwig is evidenced by a document issued by King Otto I on January 15, 947 in Frankfurt , as well as by a document handed down by Pope Agapitus II . The date of death is documented in the Merseburg necrology as Hathuwi abbatissa and in the Essen necrology as Hathuwig. Further entries can be found in the memorial books of the Reichenau and the monastery of St. Gallen , in the necrology of Borghorst and in the memorial entries of an Essen sacramentary from the late 10th century. A grave poem , which is handed down in a manuscript from St. Omer from the end of the 10th century, is assigned to her. The donor picture of a codex donated by Hathwig has been preserved through a drawing from the 17th century.
Despite this apparent variety of sources, it has so far not been possible to determine exactly Hathwig's term of office as abbess, nor to precisely determine her family background.
Life
Hathwig's year of birth, place of birth, descent and exact term of office are not known. Otto I's document from 947 provides the only exact date from Hathwig's life. The authenticity of this document, in which only the first two lines come from the pen of Arch Chancellor Brun and the rest was written in Essen, is undisputed, since the document was re-sealed after 962 with the seal of Otto I used after the imperial coronation and the Text is referred to in later documents for the Essen Abbey. The grave poem, handed down from St. Omer via a West Franconian manuscript, can be assigned with certainty to Hathwig, as it praises the reconstruction of a church as an achievement of the deceased . The Stiftsbrand of 946 is documented by Otto I's document and a mention in Cologne annals. According to the grave poem, Hathwig served as abbess for almost fifty years and lived for a few years after the fire. The document of Agapits II, which was handed down only in a copy on the initiative of Abbess Berta von Arnsberg in 1245 and again in 1290, is dated to 951. The authenticity of this document is in doubt. The next reliable, datable abbess of Essen is Mathilde , who received a certificate from Otto II on July 23, 973 , so that Hathwig must have died between 951 and 973.
The traditional Essen abbess calendars do not help in determining the term of office of Hathwig, since they were only compiled in the early modern period and are riddled with errors. The so-called Brussels abbess catalog mentions Hathwig as the tenth Essen abbess after a Gerbergis who, like her, is said to have been a daughter "imperatoris Henrici primi" (meaning King Heinrich I , who was never an imperator, i.e. emperor). This family assignment is a mix-up of the catalog creator: Heinrich I actually had two daughters named Gerberga and Hathwig , but both remained in the layman's status. Hathwig was married to Hugo von Franzien in 947, when the Essen abbess of the same name received Otto I's certificate , so the identity of Henry I's daughter with the abbess is ruled out, as marital status and abbess status were not compatible. Hiltrop's second early modern abbess catalog also makes Hathwig the daughter of Heinrich I. His other information about her is also confusing: Hiltrop's predecessor Suanhild , who lived a hundred years later, Hathwig's successor is said to be Mathilde I , who follows an Alheidis who is depicted on two gems (this only applies to Mathilde II ).
Even if Hathwig's term of office cannot be precisely determined, numerous activities of the abbess can be inferred from the sources.
The Hathwig Building
Walter Zimmermann, who undertook archaeological excavations on the war-torn Essen cathedral in 1952 , found the foundations of a previously unknown building under the westwork . Due to Hathwig's building activity, which is known from the grave poem, he coined the name Hathwig building for this building, which he reconstructed as a typical Ottonian westwork with a square central tower and two flanking stair towers, whereby the westwork was rebuilt after the fire from 947. Assuming that this first westwork was built around 947, Zimmermann dated the still existing westwork of the cathedral to the term of office of Abbess Theophanu (1039 to 1058). More recent research has now decided to date the existing westwork to 997 to 1002, i.e. during the term of office of Abbess Mathilde II, and to start building the first westwork previously ascribed to Hathwig earlier. By building west works, monasteries also made their imperial immediacy clear structurally. From the text of the document of January 15, 947 it emerges that the Essen monastery had acquired imperial immediacy under Otto I's predecessors, presumably under Konrad I (911–919). The assignment of the first westwork to Hathwig is therefore questionable, but due to her long term of office she cannot be ruled out as client. The extent of its reconstruction, secured by the grave poem, is also unknown.
The Essen scriptorium
With the exception of a document from King Zwentibold, the fire of 946 destroyed the monastery archive and the book inventory except for older books that are no longer in use, such as the Altfrid Gospels . Under the leadership of Hathwig, the canons in Essen worked hard to replace and supplement the holdings. The Essen scriptorium was only proven in 1991 due to similarities in the manuscripts. Due to the number of people who wrote - between the fire of the pen and the end of the century, there were evidence of around 60 individual hands writing in the Essen style - the pen's canons are excluded from writing. The individual hands seldom reached a calligraphic level. Initials were kept simple, drawings are rare and of poor artistic quality. The pen ladies wrote for their own use on good white sheep parchment , which they wrote on with a glossy black ink that is easy to distinguish from the brown iron gall ink of the neighboring Werden monastery . The templates for the copies were carefully selected in Essen. A Prudentius manuscript that has survived shows that the canons of Essen have completed the book given by Werden using another copy from a different textual tradition. The source of the other template could have been Bishop Brun of Cologne, who is said to have passed on Prudentius texts to some convents and was considered very well read. Brun's grave poem has been handed down in the same manuscript from St. Omer as Hathwig's, which suggests contacts between the Essen monastery and Brun.
Relic acquisition
Hathwig expanded the healing of her church to include more relics , with a particularly pronounced tendency to acquire relics from female saints, who were particularly suitable as role models for the sanctuary of the monastery. Hathwig procured relics of St. Pinnosa from Cologne and possibly St. Liuttrudis from Niggenkerke (near Corvey ) and St. Walburga from the Meschede monastery . St. Pinnosa in particular was a highly valued saint; the loss of these relics was heavily lamented in Cologne, because originally this saint had the role of St. Ursula as the leader of the virgins who were martyred by the Huns near Cologne. Hathwig had the Vita Pinnosas and the pen patrons Cosmas and Damian written down by the scriptorium of the Fulda Abbey in a magnificent manuscript, which is lost today. Only the picture of the founder has survived through a modern drawing. The veneration of Pinnosa continued even among Hathwig's successors. Abbess Theophanu had a silver reliquary made for the relics, which is also lost today . On the book cover of the Theophanu Gospels , also donated by this abbess, Pinnosa is one of the saints alongside Walburga who support Theophanus' intercession .
The Hathwig Codex
Of the splendid manuscript that Hathwig had made for the Essen Abbey, only two drawings have survived through modern copies. Common to both drawings is the partial use of Greek characters to denote the figures. The drawings are the donor's picture on which Hathwig, accompanied by another figure in the clothes of a sanctuary, hands over the book to the Mother of God, who is accompanied by two angels, through the mediation of Saint Pinnosa. The second picture shows Jesus crowning Saints Cosmas and Damian. From these images it is concluded that the manuscript contained the saints' lives of Cosmas and Damian and Pinnosas. Despite the fact that they are only known as copies, both images can be recognized as products of the Fulda School of Illumination.
The founder picture
The donor's picture shows Mary in an oval halo as the enthroned Mother of God, who is accompanied by two angels, called cherubim and seraphim in Greek script . On an intermediate level formed as a hill on the floor line, i.e. raised above the donors, stands Saint Pinnosa, who points with her right to the supplicants, while her left mediates to Mary. Below Mary, Hathwig is shown kneeling, praying, and offering the book with her right hand. Next to Hathwig there is a second female figure in the clothes of a sanctuary, known as a Thioterae . The interpretation of this figure is not certain. It was suggested that it is a corruption of Θεοφοῤος, Bodarwé suggests the reading ΟεωΘεεαι (the consecrated), with which the figure should be interpreted as a representative of the Convention.
The image of Christ
The picture shows Jesus enthroned in the center in an oval halo, additionally marked by a cross nimbus and the title written in Greek letters as "King of kings". Below him stand the named saints Cosmas and Damian, Cosmas on the right, Damian on the left. Both are additionally identified as doctors by their usual saint attribute, the ointment pot. Christ puts a crown on both of them as a sign of their holiness won through martyrdom . The structure of this picture follows Byzantine models.
Increasing the importance of the pen
Under Hathwig, the Essen convent renewed a prayer fraternity with the St. Gallen monastery and the Gandersheim monastery , this is concluded from the fact that a list of Essen canonical women via the Gandersheim detour got into a St. Gallen fraternity book. In prayer communities, Essen was connected to important and respected institutions that were particularly close to the rulers. This allows the conclusion that Essen also enjoyed a great reputation and was close to the rulers. This was also expressed in the fact that the pen's immunity was documented for the first time in Otto I's document of 947 . In the papal deed of Agapit, the monastery was also given the exemption , so that it was subordinate to the ruler in the worldly and only to the Holy See spiritually. If the assumption is correct that the later Essen abbess Mathilde, who was Otto's granddaughter, was handed over to the Essen monastery for education around 953, this was also a recognition of Hathwig's achievements by the ruling family.
Memoria
Hathwig's year of death, like that of many medieval people, is not recorded because, in the context of commemorating the dead, only the annually recurring day of death was relevant. In Essen, Hathwig was commemorated every year with several masses and the illumination of her grave, which was probably in the central nave of the collegiate church in front of the altar. Hathwig's death day, July 18, is recorded in several necrologists from monasteries and monasteries, most of which were connected to the Essen monastery in prayer fraternities. Her entry in the Merseburg Nekrolog, in which the historian Gerd Althoff recognized the memoria of the Liudolfinger , is remarkable . Due to the inclusion of Hathwig in the prayer memorial of the Liudolfingers, a Liudolfingian descent of Hathwig is considered certain.
Hathwig's grave poem
Perquam conspicuus generoso pectore ΤΑΦΟC,
Quo debellato sita victrix principe mundi
Candida lacteoli coetus antistes, amicum
Spiritui sanctum templum, sed integra vitae
Hostia grata Deo, sed labia pura, sed agno
Digna comes, durx virginibus dignissima castis.
Quos hic mundus habet, requis decerpta laborum
Iam meliore sui super æthera parte triumphat.
Non est huic titulus atavos conferre supinos,
Prestitit his sola virtutis imagine nota
Atque ita se gessit, dum mundo seria vixit,
Ut nido hanc pennas facile extendisse loquare
Magno maiores. Subiit nam mascula mundum
Foecundum culpe ΑΡΕΤΗC CΠΟΥΔΟΙΑ satelles,
Certans angelicae fragile sub corpore vitae
Propositique tenax sexum virtute redemit.
Et quam post cineres tibi, Christe, restruxerat edem, Augens
qua numero commissas qua meritorum
Ditans dote suas callensque sagacius una,
Quid deceat, quid non, quo virtus, quo ferat error.
Adde, quod insignis studio pietatis in omnes
Cara suis iuxta metuendaque mater alumnis
Ingenium tetrico destrinxit mite severo.
Tota teres vitiisque recalcans tuta tetendit
Unguibus a teneris mutare superna caducis,
Quod sibi iam gratum gratatur compote voto.
Qua concessisti naturae, virgo beata,
Et subscripta dies, quam versu dicere non est,
nos prece, nos psalmis tibi iusta peregimus, at tu
Sis nostris memor atque perita precare vicissim.
Below that is a short prose text that has been poorly preserved and has large gaps. He reports that Hathwig was appointed abbess and that this office was exemplary for forty-eight years. She was physically ill and died after a long suffering and was deeply mourned by everyone.
The poem itself contains references or quotations from ancient authors in numerous places, for example in line 3 “integra vitae”, which refers to Horace's Carmen I, 22, 1, or line 8, which refers to Ovid's Metamorphoses 15, 875.
Questions
The Liudolfingerin Hathwig was an energetic director of the Essen monastery, from whose work her successors, who are now more prominent, benefited. The question of their exact term of office remains open. In particular, the order of the Essen abbesses before Mathilde II is questionable. In the roughly seventy years between Abbess Wicburg , who received the gift of King Zwentibold in 898 and possibly died in 906, and Mathilde II's assumption of office in 973, at least the Abbesses Mathilde I , Ida , held office alongside Hathwig, who was in office alone for about 48 years and Agana , whereby the ranking of Agana, under which the first crypt of the collegiate church was consecrated, and Hathwig causes problems. In 1987, Pothmann represented the sequence Mathilde I., Hathwig, Agana, Ida; more recent research tends to place Agana before Hathwig.
The second open question is the precise classification of Hathwig within the Liudolfing family. Zimmermann referred to her in the publication of his excavation results in 1958 as the daughter of Otto the Illustrious , without giving any further reasons. This assessment is questionable. The recorded children of Otto the Illustrious were born before or around 876, when his son Heinrich I took office in 912, his older brothers had already died. If she was the daughter of Otto the Illustrious, Hathwig would have to have been born around 880 and then have already accomplished her greatest achievements as abbess at an advanced age, which is not mentioned in her grave poem. Hathwig is also not referred to as a relative in Otto I's document, although according to Zimmermann she would have been the king's aunt. It seems more likely that Hathwig descended from one of the children of Otto the Illustrious.
Remarks
- ↑ Document No. 85 in Theodor Sickel (Ed.): Diplomata 12: The documents Konrad I., Heinrich I. and Otto I. (Conradi I., Heinrici I. et Ottonis I. Diplomata). Hanover 1879, pp. 166-168 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized ).
- ↑ Rhine. UB No. 2, No. 165, pp. 41-44.
- ↑ Boulogne-sur-Mar, Bibliothèque muncipale, Hs. 102, reproduced below from Poetae Latini medii aevi 5,1.2: The Ottonian Time Part 1/2 . Edited by Karl Strecker with the assistance of Norbert Fickermann. Leipzig 1937, pp. 303-304 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
- ↑ Fremer p. 37, Bodarwé p. 117
- ↑ Astrude cream . In Georg Heinrich Pertz a . a. (Ed.): Scriptores (in Folio) 1: Annales et chronica aevi Carolini. Hannover 1826, p. 98 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized version )
- ↑ The confirmations are noted that the Holy See did not have the originals. Agapit, however, issued documents with similar content for the Gandersheim monastery.
- ^ Lange, St. Cosmas and Damian, p. 50
- ↑ Bodarwé p. 276
- ↑ Bodarwé, p. 371
- ↑ Althoff, Noble and Royal Families, p. 293
- ↑ A translation is available at http://www.inschriften.net/essen-stadt/inschrift/nr/di081-0004.html#content .
- ↑ Pothmann, Die Abbissinnen, p. 6, on the other hand Fremer, p. 38f., Bodarwé p. 53
- ↑ Zimmermann, p. 39, who made Abbess Ida an older sister of Mathilde II, just as unproven
literature
- Katrinette Bodarwé: Sanctimoniales litteratae: literacy and education in the Ottonian women's communities Gandersheim, Essen and Quedlinburg. Aschendorff'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-402-06249-6 .
- Thorsten Fremer: Abbess Theophanu and the Essen monastery: memory and individuality in the Ottonian-Salic times. Verlag Peter Pomp, Bottrop Essen 2002, ISBN 3-89355-233-2 .
- Klaus Lange: St. Cosmas and Damian to eat. A plea for a new perspective on older building history. in: Government, Education and Prayer. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2000, ISBN 3-88474-907-2 .
- Heinrich May: Lost book cover from the cathedral treasure rediscovered. In: Münster am Hellweg, bulletin of the Association for the Preservation of the Essen Minster. Essen 1963, pp. 29-31.
- Helmut Müller: Essen historiography and researchers of earlier centuries. New research results. In: Essen contributions. Contributions to the history of the city and monastery of Essen 82, Essen 1966, p. 1ff.
- Tobias Nüssel: Reflections on the Essen abbesses between Wicburg and Mathilde In: Das Münster am Hellweg , yearbook of the association for the preservation of the Essen Münsters-Münsterbauverein eV, Essen 2010, pp. 7–31
- Alfred Pothmann: The abbesses of the Essen monastery. In: Münster am Hellweg, bulletin of the Association for the Preservation of the Essen Minster. Essen 1987, pp. 5-11.
- Hedwig Röckelein: Life under the protection of the saints. Relic translations according to Essen from the 9th to the 11th century in: Rulership, Education and Prayer. Klartext Verlag, Essen 2000, ISBN 3-88474-907-2 .
- Walter Zimmermann: The minster to eat. Düsseldorf 1956.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Hathwig |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hadwig; Hathauuiga; Hathuwi; Hathuwig |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Abbess of the Essen monastery |
| DATE OF BIRTH | before 947 |
| DATE OF DEATH | after 947 |