Otloh from St. Emmeram

Otloh von St. Emmeram (also: Otloch, Otlohc, Othloch, Otholochus, Otloh von Sankt Emmeran; * around 1010 in the Diocese of Freising ; † November 23, shortly after 1070 in Regensburg ) was a spiritual writer.

Life dates

Otloh came from a wealthy family. He was trained in the monastery school in Tegernsee , from where he was sent to Franconia because of his talent for writing. He must have been in the Hersfeld monastery around 1024 ; later he was a cleric in the Freising diocese . There it came to a dispute with the archipelago Werinher in 1032 , which is why Otloh entered the Benedictine monastery St. Emmeram in Regensburg as a monk .

In St. Emmeram, Otloh was the dean and head of the monastery school. Among his students was Wilhelm von Hirsau . Travels took him to Montecassino and Fulda . He went there in 1062 because of a conflict with Bishop Otto von Regensburg , but came back to Regensburg via Amorbach in 1066/67 .

To person

Otloh was a talented writer who did not shrink from criticizing the church and the clergy (e.g. Regensburg Bishop Gebhard III ). But all his life he was burdened with serious conflicts of conscience, some of which can be grasped in the descriptions of his visions. For example, he had a predilection for the works of ancient authors (e.g. Lukan ), but whose teachings were in conflict with his Christian faith.

The majority of his works were initially not widely used, and his writings were not rediscovered until around 1500 by the St. Emmeram librarian.

Works

• Otloh's prayer - a text written in Old Bavarian
• De confessione actuum meorum - autobiographical writing, lost
• De doctrina spirituali
• De admonitione clericorum et laicorum
• De permissionis bonorum et malorum causis - pastoral letter
• De cursu spirituali
• Libellus de tentationibus - autobiographical writing
• Liber proverbiorum - collection of sayings by ancient and Christian authors for school lessons
• Liber visionum - collection of the numerous visions of Otloh and other visionaries
• Liber de temptatione cuiusdam monachi
• Vita Bonifatii
• Vita Sancti Wolfgangi
• Vita Sancti Magni
• Vita Sancti Altonis
• "Quomodo legendum sit in rebus visibilibus" - a sermon treatise (Amorbach, 1067)
• His authorship in relation to a report on the translation of the relics of St. Dionysius to Regensburg is controversial.
• He also forged documents in favor of St. Emmeram.

expenditure

• Collected works in Migne, Patrologia Latina, CXLVI, 27-434.
• “Liber de temptatione cuiusdam monachi” investigation, critical edition and translation by Sabine Gäbe, 1999 (Peter Lang) ISBN 3-906759-45-8
• Liber Visionum , ed. Paul Gerhard Schmidt in: MGH sources for intellectual history. Böhlau, 1989, ISBN 3-88612-073-2 .

literature

• Hedwig Röckelein : Otloh, Gottschalk, Tnugdal: Individual and collective vision patterns of the High Middle Ages. (European university publications. Series III. History and auxiliary sciences. Bd. 319) Dissertation Tübingen. Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-8204-9512-6 .
• Hedwig Röckelein: Otloh of Sankt Emmeram . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 6, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1993, ISBN 3-7608-8906-9 , Sp. 1559 f.
• Wilhelm Blum:  Otloh of St. Emmeram. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 6, Bautz, Herzberg 1993, ISBN 3-88309-044-1 , Sp. 1339-1340.
• Wilhelm Wattenbach :  Otloh of St. Emmeran . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1887, p. 546.
• Stephan Müller :  Otloh of St. Emmeran. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 19, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-428-00200-8 , p. 646 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Werner Goez : Otloh von Sankt Emmeram, monk, copyist, writer. In: Pictures of life from the Middle Ages. The time of the Ottonians, Salians and Staufers. Primus, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-89678-701-9 , pages 168-177.

Web links

• Othlo monachus S. Emmerami Ratisponensis in the repertory "Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages"
• Literature by and about Otloh von St. Emmeram in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia , Robert Appleton Company, New York 1913.
• Othlonus Ratisbonensis in Documenta Catholica Omnia