Search results
BEGINS THE TRANSLATION OF THE BLESSED BISHOP GEBHARD. The following seems to distinguish between the death of the just and the death of sinners: the names of sinners are not remembered much among good men, while the just are remembered with praises and will be kept in eternal memory. Indeed, the death of sinners is most unfortunate, while the death of his saints is precious in the sight of the Lord. For God, who rewards the good ungrudgingly, not only ceaselessly rewards the merits of saints in heaven, but also on earth. When we see miracles occurring near the bones
Abbot Conrad of blessed memory, but will in fact relate certain examples of his diligence for posterity’s sake. He was skilled in the art of poetry and music, and was of the best character. He had a clear voice, was friendly in conversation, had venerable gray hair, and was restrained in manner and word. He built many splendid things that were destroyed in the fire. 9 6.4 [6.19]. At this time Count Rudolf of Ramsberg bought a fortress called Rheineck from Conrad of Heiligenberg, who had held it in benefice from the church of Constance. 10 And when he lived in this
Introduction Book One, more than any of the other books that comprise the CP, is a work of creative memory. Writing around 1136, in the wake of a tumultuous period of reform, political disruption, and even exile, the chronicler weaves an historical narrative that answers his community’s need for continuity with the past and security in the present. The focus of Book One is the story of Petershausen’s foundation by Bishop Gebhard II of Constance. The narrative is structured around the figure of Gebhard himself, with the chronicler first offering an account
events that had taken place between fifty and twenty years earlier. As with many second-generation reformers, the chronicler (who was too young to have lived through the initial period of reform himself) spins a narrative of decline, heroically halted and reversed by the agents of reform. This is a constructed narrative, which like many other medieval monastic chronicles, serves to legitimize the present woven from the “messy memories” of the community. 6 Book Three also offers an interesting local perspective on the great ecclesio-political crises of the eleventh
allow the community to burn following a series of miraculously extinguished fires, 10 an anxiety even more urgently expressed in a passage in which the chronicler remarks on the unnatural death of each of the community’s previous seven abbots. “Who would believe,” he comments, “that this occurred without harsh divine judgment?” 11 That this passage was deleted from the manuscript suggests that a subsequent reader thought it best to erase these messy memories in a later act of “social forgetting.” 12 Book Four 4.1. ON THE ELECTION OF ABBOT BERTHOLD. After the
, who was younger, with this same hope. This is the place where the venerable Ratpero had first dwelled, as I said much earlier, and where he had built a church. 8 I will try to add something worthy about his deeds to this work, lest such a man’s merits, already scarcely preserved in the memory of men, pass entirely into oblivion. A.5 [5.11]. THE LIFE OF BLESSED RATPERO. It is said that the man of God Ratpero was born of noble and pious parents from Thuringia. His entire family line is thought to be ornamented and completed in him, as if by a golden clasp. He left
in the village called Petershausen, which was built by Bishop Gebhard of blessed memory in honor of St. Gregory. And we honor it with the precepts of the Roman church, with the stipulation that this same monastery, over which Abbot Perriger now presides – with all the many estates appertaining to it, including cultivated and uncultivated lands, tenants, and dependents, and whatever Bishop Gebhard delivered to that monastery by right of inheritance or some other acquisition, and whatever he sold from his episcopate or relinquished without sale, as well as whatever
English translation of either of these Latin chronicles. 9 See, for example, CP 1.27 and 2.2, with (possible) interpolations regarding the right of the monastery to elect its advocate. 10 Ekkehard IV of St. Gall, Casus Sancti Galli . MGH SS 2: 75–162. 11 On the concept of “imaginative memory,” see Amy G. Remensnyder , Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France ( Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press , 1995 ), 2 – 3 . 12 For a more complete discussion of the identity of the chronicler, see Alison I. Beach , The
] which are celebrated every year in that same city, and since some while ago the lord pope Martin V, of blessed memory, concerned about their poverty, conceded to them by apostolic letter, that they might scatter and distribute that burden among all the Jews living anywhere in the towns and territories of the Holy Roman Church, according to those letters which were indeed later confirmed and agreed by the lord pope
lifestyle. Nevertheless, Ludwig’s decision was hardly a common one, and it is not surprising that the monks at Arnstein chose to preserve in writing the memory of their exceptional founder. The text translated here combines an account of Ludwig’s life with a history of the Premonstratensian community at Arnstein. As it shows, Ludwig did not disappear from the world of the secular