Hilary of Orléans

Hilarius von Orléans (* around 1080 in or near Orléans, † December 25th after 1162 near Paris) was a philologist and literary scholar, monastery official, traveling lecturer and poet in 12th century France. Due to his poetry , he is considered to be an authoritative representative of so-called vagante poetry .

Life

Hilarius was born around 1080 in an unknown place in Orléanais , possibly in Orléans itself. Nothing is known about his family, except that Hilarius has a wealthy sister named Hildburgis. As a young man, around 1095, Hilarius began to study literature and poetry in the crown domain, disciplines that at that time were more flourishing in Orléans than in Paris . Shortly after 1100 Hilarius enters the service of Bishop Johann von Orleán , a scandal-ridden clergyman who remains in office until 1125 despite all suspicions. Homoerotic tendencies can be demonstrated in both the bishop and Hilarius; to what extent these play a role in the appointment of Hilary remains unclear.

Shortly before 1109, Hilarius falls out of favor with his employer and after 8 years of "fruitless service", as he calls it himself, receives the passport. Hugo Primas von Orléans brings Hilarius to the cathedral school of Orléans, probably with the support of the cathedral chapter , which opposes the bishop. The decisive factor for the appointment as a lecturer is Hilarius' literary talent, his scientia litterarum and his doctrina , ie his knowledge of literature and his teaching qualifications. In Hilarius, however, the primate soon seems to have grown into such a competitor that he in turn deprives him of his favor and asks him to move to another city. Hilarius can only avoid the unfavorable consequences of an unknown incident with the help of the Garlande brothers , a very influential nobility family in Orléans.

Finally, at the age of 30, Hilarius bitterly leaves Orléans and goes to Angers . He entered the service of the nunnery Le Ronceray near Angers as one of three canons , as a notary and parish administrator . A total of 19 documents of the monastery from the time between 1109 and 1125 bear his name, they are drawn up during the tenure of the abbesses Tiburgis (1104–1122), Mabilia (1122–1124) and Hildburgis (1125–1130). His successor at the cathedral school in Orléans seems to be of such poor quality that Hugo Primas Hilarius calls back to Orléans with flattering words, but in vain. A little later Hugo Primas for his part left the city on the Loire , declared himself a traveling scholar and traveled through the country, offering his services as a writer and poet.

In Angers itself Hilary dedicated in addition to his official duties on poetry, sings in several poems educated nuns of the Convention, including a novice named Bona , a nun Superba , further the Reklusin Eve from Angers. In 1121 he even wrote an official protocol in verse to show his talent. It is a so-called judgment of God to settle a legal dispute at Brissarthe . Hilarius probably also participates in a school foundation of his order as a teacher, but this activity is not documented by sources.

At some point in the course of 1126 - after more than 17 years of service - there was a break with the new abbess. Hilarius left the convent at the age of about 46 to go to the Champagne region to see the philosopher and theologian Peter Abelard , who built the oratory of the Paraclet on the Ardusson river and now runs a highly successful school there. Hilarius stayed for some time with Peter Abelard, whom he admired as a logician , and wrote at least two poems about life at that time. In one of these poems Hilarius confesses that he is a stout but fun-loving man. By the year 1127 Peter Abelard leaves to the chagrin of his followers his school on Ardusson and goes to Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys in Brittany to the local abbacy to take over. Since the Champagne is threatened with war at this time, his students get lost and Hilarius will have set off again.

For Hilarius, this point in time marks the beginning of a wandering life, of which we do not know exactly how long it will last. However, like his colleague Hugo Primas von Orléans, it seems to lead him through large parts of France. There is no evidence of vagante clichés such as “wine, women, song” in Hilarius. Even if his life is unsteady and not tied to a specific location, it is anything but disorderly and unrestrained. Hilarius, whose reputation as a teacher has obviously spread through word of mouth, enters into fixed temporary contracts with defined remuneration with individual schools or chapters of churches and monasteries, thus serving a flexible education market, as it were.

His path can be roughly traced: Hilarius follows the lower reaches of the Loire and goes via southern Brittany into Bas-Poitou , towards the Atlantic coast. His stations are Machecoul in the Pays de Retz , Montaigu and around 1138 also Talmont in today's Vendée . Lessons don't always go smoothly, sometimes there is trouble with school fees. But at least Hilarius is so popular that he can turn down offers from other school cities.

In 1132 he returned to Angers again to bear witness in favor of his old convent, but his stay in the city was no longer permanent. Later, around 1135, he even received a call as the new head of the Angers Cathedral School , presented by the previous Rector Vasletus, who enjoyed broad support from the Angers clergy. It is unclear why Hilairus, now around 55 years old, refuses, but his bad experiences in Orléans may play a role. With the call to Angers, Hilarius' trail is initially lost in the dark. From his letters from this time we learn that Hilarius is very religious and, as a teacher, takes care of his students.

We learn from Wilhelm of Tire that Hilarius still teaches as a professor of literature in old age . Around 1160 he studied philology and poetry with Hilarius von Orléans and studied classical authors. However, it is not certain that Wilhelm will be taught in Orléans; Paris is more likely the place to study. Hilarius is now between 70 and 80 years old, thus a senior , ie an old man, as Wilhelm calls him. Hilarius may teach at the same chair that his former mentor Hugo Primas - attested to in Paris around 1142 - has since left. The presence of the two literature professors proves that at this point in time the metropolis on the Seine, Orléans, had overtaken the rank of study center for ancient authors.

Hilarius probably entered the convent of Saint-Victor at the end of his life as monachus ad succurrendum , that is, as a foster child , where he died on Christmas day of an unknown year. He leaves his collection of letters to this Convention.

profession

In the life of Hilarius, which, in contrast to that of Hugo Primate, can be better understood through the letters left behind, one can define what was to be understood by a vagante poet at that time . Both Hilarius and Hugo Primas from Orléans, after an initial church or monastery career, renounce the established scientific enterprise in order to roam the country as vagabonds for years - if not decades - and sometimes here, sometimes there their skills and knowledge on the " free market ”. All associations with a kind of "learned tramp" or goliardism are superfluous: Both earn a living by instructing solvent customers, which they organize in various school towns, far more effectively than just publishing their poems. That does not mean that one gains wealth by working as a traveling teacher: We know from Hilarius that he feels underpaid in Talmont, and from Hugo Primas it is assumed that at the end of his life he will end up in the poor hospital. Yet the primate's poems seem to promote rather than correct the distorted image of vagante poetry. The anecdotes told in them about the "life of the little man", who constantly quarrels with the authorities and, because he has messed with them, now has to spend his old days in humiliating poverty and contempt, probably serve more the public's taste than that they correspond to historical truth. At least there is no conclusive evidence that this is the case. Hilarius von Orléans, for his part, is hardly active in this literary genre, but rather conveys a completely different picture in his letters. They show the professionalism and planning with which a wandering teacher - and this was Hilarius in the end primarily: a teacher, but not a poet - runs his business. Such a traveling lecturer is neither free in the true sense of the word, nor is he one of those aimless vagabonds who, as clerici vagi, quite impiously subscribe to “wine, women and song” or, as golards, declare the mockery and contempt of the establishment to be the highest goal in life. So, at least as far as Hilarius von Orléans is concerned, one could confidently replace the clichéd term “vagante poet” with “a lecturer on call”.

“With its breadth of profane, contemporary, satirical or erotic themes, Latin poetry was mainly composed, as far as we have evidence, not by a ragged bunch of bohemians, the traveling scholars, vagabonds and golards, but by hard-working, highly educated academics [...] "

- Peter Dronke

plant

The virtuosity of the language, its timbre and literary versatility - the corpus includes not only a legend of saints and liturgical games but also some love songs for representatives of both sexes - raise them to the highest rank of medieval poetry. His poems not only show a masterfully mastered rhythm and metrics, but also demonstrate the broad literary arc that the author, despite all his poetic individuality, has drawn from classics such as Martial , Juvenal , Virgil , Ovid and Ausonius to contemporary poets such as Marbod von Rennes , Balderich von Bourgueil , Hildebert von Lavardin and Peter Abelard know how to stretch. On top of that, Hilarius is represented in the Carmina Burana , the famous collection of poems from Benediktbeuern, which made Carl Orff well known. Relatively clear text analogies between the Carmina 6 and 8 of Hilarius and the Carmina Burana 95 and 117 speak for a common author.

literature

Manuscripts

• Grand lantern of the monastery Le Ronceray, 6 rolls of documents each 32 mx 0.6 m, from the 13th century.
• MS 2418 from the Rosny-sous-Bois palace library near Paris, 12th century.
• Cod. 998, Library Kloster Melk, Austria.
• MS Paris BN 11331.
• MS Paris BN lat. 14615 (formerly St. Victor 1060), copy 17th century
• MS Brussels Bibl. Royale 1979.
• Cod. Vatic. lat. 2002.

Secondary literature

• Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti, ed. J. Mabillon, Vol. 5, Book 68, § 68-69, Lucca 1749, p. 249.
• Jacques Joseph Champollion-Figeac : Hilarii versus et ludi, Paris 1838.
• Cartularium B. Mariae Caritatis (Le Ronceray), ed. P. Marchegay, in: Archives d'Anjou, Vol. 3, Angers 1854, pp. 168-169, 347 and 284-287.
• Hilaire, disciple d'Abélard, in: M. Paulin: Histoire littéraire de la France , Vol. 12, Paris 1869, pp. 251-254.
• P. Marchegay: Charte en vers de l'an 1121, composée par Hilaire, disciple d'Abailard et chanoine du Ronceray d'Angers, in: Bibl. De l'Ecole des Chartes 37, 1876, pp. 245-252.
• A. Luchaire: Études sur quelques manuscrits de Rome et de Paris, in: Université de Paris, Bibliothèque de la Fa-culté des Lettres, vol. 8, Paris 1899, p. 31ff.
• JB Fuller: Hilarii versus et ludi, edited from the Paris MS, New York, 1929.
• Th. Latzke: Abelard, Hilarius and the poem 22 of the Ripoll collection, in: Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 8, 1971, pp. 70-89.
• N. Häring: Hilary of Orléans and his Letter Collection, in: Studi medievali, Serie terza, anno XIV. Fasc. II, 1973, pp. 1071-1122.
• N. Häring: The poems and mystery games of Hilary of Orléans, in: Studi medievali, series terza, anno XVII. Fasc. II, 1976, pp. 915-968.
• Th. Latzke: Das Verwahrungsgedicht with special consideration of Carmina Burana 95 and 117, in: Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 11, 1976, pp. 151-176.
• Th. Latzke: On the poem "De papa scolastico" by the Abelard pupil Hilarius, in: Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 13, 1978, pp. 86-99.
• Th. Latzke: On the 'Iudicium de calumnia molendini Brisesarte' and on the four nuns pistles of Hilarius, in: Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 16, 1981, pp. 73-96.
• Th. Latzke: Die Ganymed-Episteln des Hilarius, in: Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 18, 1983, pp. 131–159.
• W. Bulst and ML Bulst-Thiele : Hilarii Aurelianensis versus et ludi, epistolae, ludus Danielis Belovacensis, Leiden, New-York, Copenhagen, Cologne 1989.
• M. Bielitz: Ludus Danielis Belovacensis, the Egerton manuscript, comments on the music of the Daniel game, in: Middle Latin Studies and Texts 16, Leiden 1989.
• W. Robl: The poet and teacher Hilarius von Orléans, In the footsteps of an Abelard student, Neustadt 2002.

Web links

• W. Robl: The poet Hilarius of Orléans ( online )
• W. Robl: Chalautre and the source of logic - The poems of Hilarius von Orléans about his teacher Peter Abelard ( online )