Vita Leobae

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The Vita Leobae abbatissae Biscofesheimensis is the saint's vita of St. Lioba (* around 700/710 in Wessex , England; † September 28, 782 in Schornsheim ) written by Rudolf von Fulda between 836 and 838 .

Emergence

The author Rudolf von Fulda wrote it in the Fulda monastery on behalf of the Fulda abbot Hrabanus Maurus about 50 years after the death of the saint. He had notes of several previous attempts to write the saint's vita. These predecessors were trustworthy men who in turn gained their knowledge through stories from four students of the Lioba, the nuns Agatha, Thecla, Nana and Eolibe. In particular, he cites notes from a monk named Mago , who was unable to finish the project of a Vita of St. Lioba before his sudden death.

The period in which the Vita Leobae was created is between 836 and 838: The author does not mention the translation of the bones of the saints into the Church of St. Peter on the Petersberg near Fulda , which did not take place before 836, but at the latest in 838, but does name it as Witnesses of the last miracle described in the Vita was an old monk, Firmadus, who died in 836.

Transmission

The original manuscript by Rudolf von Fulda was lost in the Thirty Years' War . However, a number of copies have survived:

  1. Bavarian State Library, Munich. Signature: Clm 18897, probably the oldest of the surviving copies. It was created in the 12th century in the Tegernsee Monastery .
  2. Bavarian State Library, Munich. Signature: Clm 4608. Collective manuscript of various saints' lives. The copy of Lioba's saint's life was made in the 12th century in the Benediktbeuern monastery .
  3. Bavarian State Library, Munich. Signature: Clm 22245.. Collective manuscript of various saints' lives. The vitae of Saint Lioba was created in the 12th century in the Windberg Monastery . Chapters 1–11 are based on the Codex Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München. Signature: Clm 18897.
  4. Bavarian State Library, Munich. Signature: Clm 11321, 101r-120r. [Only contains the preceding dedication letter to the nun Hadamuta].
  5. "Brussels Codex 206". The life of the Lioba was recorded here together with other saints' lives in the 13th century.
  6. "Codex 102" of the Trier Cathedral Library comes from the end of the 12th or beginning of the 13th century and probably uses the same source as the "Brussels Codex 206".
  7. "Vienna Codex 339". A collection of women's vitae (Lioba: Part 25), written in the 13th century.
  8. "Würzburg Codex". Completed October 25, 1417
  9. "Erlanger Codex 321" (formerly: No. 268) = Book of St. Mary at Halisbrunn from the 12th or the beginning of the 13th century in Heilsbronn Monastery . The vita of Saint Lioba is included, but the preface and the chap. 2-5 are omitted.
  10. "Andreas von Bamberg, who also adds Lioba's vita to the great work of the Benedictine order on holy men and women", referring to the "Würzburg Codex" and the "Erlanger Codex 321".
  11. "Codex Heiligenkreuz " from the 12th century.
  12. Codex of the 13th century from the Cistercian monastery Lilienfeld , a subsidiary of the Heiligenkreuz monastery.
  13. “Codex Melkicensis” from the Melk Benedictine Abbey .
  14. "Codex Cologne" from the 14th century.
  15. “Codex in the British Museum ”, London, from 1464.
  16. "Codex Wolfenbüttel" No. 322 from the 15th century.
  17. "Codex Blaubeuren".
  18. " Andreas Lang : Biography of St. Lioba ". In: “List of Saints of the Benedictine Order”. [Manuscript] around 1500.

The Vita of the Saints was first printed in 1574 by Laurentius Surius .

content

  • Preface Rudolf von Fulda to the nun Hadamout
  • Chapter 1, Prologue: Mission and Sources for the Work
  • Chapter 2-5: The Benedictine - monastery Wimborne and its abbess Tetta where Lioba was raised.
    • Chapter 2: The Discipline of Wimborne Monastery
    • Chapter 3: Abbess Tetta
    • Chapter 4: Miracle story about Abbess Tetta - The lowered grave
    • Chapter 5: Miraculous story about the Abbess Tetta - The lost keys
  • Chapters 6–8: Youth of the Lioba
    • Chapter 6: Origin and Miraculous Birth of the Lioba
    • Chapter 7: Upbringing Lioba in Wimborne Monastery
    • Chapter 8: The Dream of the Red Thread - Predicting Your Missionary Mission
  • Chapters 9–21: Missionary Work
    • Chapters 9–11: Requirements
      • Chapter 9: The missionary work of St. Boniface in "Germania".
      • Chapter 10: St. Boniface calls Lioba to collaborate.
      • Chapter 11: Bonifatius appoints Lioba as abbess of the Tauberbischofsheim monastery .
    • Chapters 12–16: Four Miracle Stories
      • Chapter 12: Lioba saves the monastery’s reputation after residents of Tauberbischofsheim found the body of a newborn child in the stream that ran through the monastery.
      • Chapter 13: Lioba saves the monastery and part of the Tauberbischofsheim in a major fire caused by salt consecrated by Boniface.
      • Chapter 14: Lioba stills a thunderstorm.
      • Chapter 15: Lioba heals a terminally ill nun.
      • Chapter 16: The Beneficial Result of the Lioba Work
    • Chapters 17–21: The time after Boniface
      • Chapter 17: Boniface arranges his estate and instructs Lioba to succeed him in the mission by investiture with his monastic robe and determines that she should be buried in his grave after her death.
      • Chapter 18: Work of the Lioba after Boniface's death
      • Chapter 19: Lioba prays at Boniface's grave, arranges his own estate and withdraws to Schornsheim .
      • Chapter 20: Lioba's last visit to Queen Hildegard
      • Chapter 21: Death of St. Lioba, burial in Fulda
  • Chapters 22–23: Saints Lioba after her death
    • Chapter 22: The Miracle of the Iron Ring
    • Chapter 23: The healing of the nervous Spaniard

Rating

The vita of a saint serves to put her in the right, holy light in the time for which the vita is written. Rudolf von Fulda and his client Hrabanus Maurus therefore faced a problem: On the one hand, theological and church-political views had changed in the 50 years since the death of the saint. The relatively “emancipatory” approach for an - also active - role of women in the church, which Lioba represented and lived by himself , had been replaced by the more androcentric Roman views. Furthermore, the handling of the mortal remains of the saint had violated the will of Boniface: she was not buried in his grave. However, there were limits to correcting these deviations in the context of the saint's life. The events were not so far back in time that there were no living strands of tradition to testify to the events. In this respect there are three layers of time in the Lioba saint's vitae, for which reinterpretation was differently difficult:

  1. The time in England
  2. Lioba's work and death in the Frankish Empire,
  3. her work after her death.

The time in England

For the time in England there were practically no authentic sources for Rudolf von Fulda’s contemporaries except the existing oral tradition on the life of St. Lioba. This offered the greatest scope for interpretative interventions. Rudolf von Fulda uses this by using the first section right at the beginning of the narrative to describe the strict Benedictine discipline of the Wimborne monastery, in which Lioba was brought up. The following chapters 3–5 underpin this by not going into further detail on Lioba, but describing the disciplined life under her abbess in Wimborne Monastery.

This description is completely ahistorical and obviously only serves to posthumously make Lioba an exemplary Benedictine woman in the sense of a view that prevailed 50 years after her death. Wimborne was a double monastery . Double monasteries were complexes that - in separate enclosures - united a women's and a men's monastery under the direction of an abbess . This was a special form of monastic life in the Irish-Anglo-Saxon Church of the early Middle Ages - unthinkable in continental Europe in the 830s.

From this early period of the life of the Lioba there are hardly any sources on the life of St. Lioba that are independent of the biography of Rudolf von Fulda. The oldest independent testimony is a copy of a letter from the Lioba to Boniface in advance of her call to the mission on the European mainland.

Lioba's work and death in the Frankish Empire

For the time of her work in the Franconian Empire, on the other hand, there was a lively oral tradition, carried by female students, direct and indirect contemporary witnesses. The factual content of the narrative about her life, chapters 9-21, is fed from them. Both historical facts and exaggerated interpretations of such facts ("miracle stories") are reproduced here - whereby the miracle stories were completely equal realities for contemporaries.

These reports must therefore all be true in essence. Here Rudolf von Fulda’s room for interpretation remained limited. He limited himself to exaggerating reality in the sense of his concern - or omitting it entirely. He himself states that he made a selection in his report and had more sources available. Between two text blocks that report the historical framework (Chapters 9–11: Initial situation and establishment of the Lioba by Boniface, and Chapters 17–21: Time after Boniface's death) he places four miracle stories that depict the beneficial work of the Lioba:

  • Lioba saves the good reputation of the monastery after residents of Tauberbischofsheim found the body of a newborn baby in the stream that ran through the monastery. The residents of Tauberbischofsheim are not only indignant about the apparent hypocrisy of the nuns, but also about the fact that they apparently poisoned the drinking water with the corpse (Chapter 12).
  • Lioba saves the monastery and part of the Tauberbischofsheim in a major fire caused by salt consecrated by Boniface (Chapter 13).
  • Lioba stills a thunderstorm (Chapter 14).
  • Lioba heals a terminally ill nun who has already been placed under a shroud, that is, prepared for burial (Chapter 15).

In this selection, Rudolf von Fulda also reflects the power of the saints to banish the four elements :

  • Water: threat from poisoned water.
  • Fire: threat posed by the major fire.
  • Air: threat from the thunderstorm.
  • Earth: threat of death.

Rudolf von Fulda could not omit the story of the installation of Lioba as one of the successors of Boniface: there were too many witnesses for that, the act was far too sensational. So he describes the event, even if it doesn't fit into the concept at all for him and his client. Before Bonifatius set out on his last trip to Friesland in 754 , during which he was murdered , he gathered his employees around him and arranged his successor: Sturmi had previously been appointed abbot of the Fulda monastery . Lullus was to become Archbishop of Mainz and Lioba was entrusted with the continuation of the missionary work. For that invested Boniface Lioba with his monk's robe and determined that she should be buried after her death in his grave in the monastery of Fulda. He entrusted her to the protection of Bishop Lul and that of the leading monks of the Fulda monastery. After the death of Boniface, however, there was a violent argument between Archbishop Lul and Sturmius over the question of whether the Fulda monastery was under the bishop's control or was exempt . The bishop ultimately won this fight. Where Lioba was in this dispute cannot be deduced from the sources - including the biography of Rudolf von Fulda. However, her church-political approach of actively including women in mission and church work became increasingly obsolete due to the theology prescribed by Rome and the male-dominated field. Lioba's theological and ecclesiastical approach thus increasingly became a disruptive factor.

Rudolf von Fulda reacts to this on the one hand with the legend of a strict Benedictine life of the Lioba in their youth in the Wimborne monastery, on the other hand with an appropriately written description of the monastery life in Tauberbischofsheim.

For this period there are some documents that are independent of the saint's life and that support the facts described by Rudolf von Fulda.

Effect after Lioba's death

At the funeral of Lioba, Abbot Baugulf von Fulda disregarded Bonifatius' express wish that Lioba be placed in his grave. It was obviously common knowledge that a command of Boniface was being disregarded here and Rudolf von Fulda could not help but report about it. He justified this - completely untrustworthy - with the fact that out of respect for Boniface no one dared to open his grave. Shortly before the end of his report, he returned to the embarrassment and emphasized that both Boniface and Lioba were buried in the same place, even if not in the same grave.

There were numerous eyewitnesses still alive for Lioba's effect after her death, so that there were few options for editing what was actually happening. As a result, the number of miracles reported drops to two. However, the details described are likely to be very close to reality. On the one hand, Rudolf von Fulda reports how an iron ring that encircled a man's arm came loose when he was praying at the grave of St. Lioba. On the other hand, Rudolf von Fulda reports on a Spanish pilgrim who had a nervous problem - he was trembling all the time. When he was praying at the tombs of Saints Boniface and Lioba, they appeared to him and he was healed. Witness the event was an old monk named Firmadus, who asked the pilgrim about it. He reported that an old bishop and a young nun had worked together to heal. Firmadus died in 836. The event probably took place shortly before and therefore only a few years before the time when Rudolf von Fulda wrote it down.

Rudolf von Fulda cannot avoid having to report, on the one hand, that his successor prevented the joint burial with Lioba, which Boniface wanted, but on the other hand, both saints performed miracles together - a contradiction that can hardly be canceled. This clearly indicates that the separate burial was a political act that should not enhance the way of life and attitude of the holy Lioba, which has meanwhile been regarded as unconventional, by a common burial, but that on the other hand Lioba with her actions and her attitude to the position of women - also in the church - was much closer to the realities of the native population than the views imported from Rome. This made her worship attractive - especially to women. This admiration started shortly after her death.

literature

  • Rudolfus von Fulda: Vita Leobae abbatissae Biscofesheimensis . In: Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptorum 15.1. Hannover 1887, pp. 118-131; edited by Georg Waitz (MGH), edited by Georg Heinrich Pertz .
  • Hieronyma Angelika Hieber: St. Lioba. First teacher in Germania and patroness of the Taubertal. Documentation of a collection . Tauberbischofsheim 1989.
  • Josef Leinweber: St. Lioba. Life and work . Fulda [1980].
  • Manuel Raisch: Lioba, the missionary at Boniface's side. The need for women in missionary work . Nuremberg 2013. ISBN 978-3-941750-80-7

Remarks

  1. ↑ The burials of saints were opened repeatedly, even for the removal of relics, including those of Boniface and later those of Lioba.
  2. ↑ Originally both arms, probably the upper arms, of the man were so tightly enclosed with iron rings that they grew into the flesh. Putting on such rings was a corporal punishment , imposed in the event of a homicide within the family (Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 78, note 567). According to the legal opinion at the time, there was no state criminal claim. Rather, the injured family had the right to punishment (which usually consisted of compensation , a large fine). This did not apply if the homicide occurred within the family. Nevertheless, the divine order was obviously disturbed by such an act. This was compensated with this corporal punishment. Originally the Spaniard wore rings on both arms. However, it had already fallen off one arm and a clearly visible scar remained. (Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 22.)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 1 (prologue).
  2. ↑ Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 78, note 568.
  3. ↑ Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 119.
  4. ↑ MGH, p. 119; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 119.
  5. ↑ MGH, p. 119; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 119.
  6. ↑ MGH, p. 119; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 119.
  7. ↑ MGH, pp. 119f; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 120; Digitized .
  8. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 120.
  9. ↑ today: Library of the Episcopal Seminary in Trier ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ps-trier.de
  10. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 120, he also mentions a “Codex of St. Maxim ”, p. 121, probably the same.
  11. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 120.
  12. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 120 (the reference there to linen weavers: St. Lioba , p. 2 is incorrect.)
  13. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 120.
  14. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 120.
  15. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 120f.
  16. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 120.
  17. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 121.
  18. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 121.
  19. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 121.
  20. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 121.
  21. ↑ Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 121.
  22. ↑ Leinweber: St. Lioba , p. 2ff.
  23. ^ MGH, p. 120; Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 121.
  24. ↑ Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 54.
  25. ^ Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 2.
  26. ↑ See: Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 53f.
  27. ↑ Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 66f.
  28. ↑ Printed in translation by: Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 112ff; Linen weaver: St. Lioba , p. 13f.
  29. ^ Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 1.
  30. ^ Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 11.
  31. ^ Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 17th
  32. ↑ Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 64.
  33. ↑ Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 102.
  34. ↑ Two letters from Bonifatius to Lioba (Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 115ff), one from Bishop Lul of Mainz (Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 114) and a certificate with which Charlemagne left the estate and the church in Schornsheim to her (Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Diplomatum Karolinorum 1. Hannover 1906. No. 144, p. 195f).
  35. ^ Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 21st
  36. ^ Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 23.
  37. ^ Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 22nd
  38. ^ Rudolf von Fulda: Vita Leobae , chap. 23.
  39. ↑ Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 78, note 568.
  40. ↑ Manuel Raisch: Lioba , p. 63.