I exhorted you by word of mouth, be zealous in study, and fail not to grasp at whatever of noble learning you may be able to gain from the most lucid and fertile genius of this great orator.' 1 CHAP. III. monies of his merits. The Church and posterity have not been forgetful of the Testiclaims of Rabanus to their grateful remembrance. Rudolfus, Church his able successor in the monastery school, styles him a writers to distinguished scholar, and second, as a poet, to none of his time.' 'He was the first,' says Trithemius, who taught Germans to speak the Latin and Greek tongues.' Baronius he appears as fulgentissimum sidus; to Bellarmine as aeque doctus et pius.3 To founder. To signal ability as a teacher and merit as a writer, His acRabanus added no small achievements as a founder. At tivity as a the time of his election as abbat, no less than sixteen monasteries and nunneries, either founded by former abbats or affiliated at their own desire, already looked up to Fulda as their parent house. To these Rabanus added six more,those at Corvey, Solenhofen, Celle, Hersfeld, Petersberg, and Hirschau ; we may accordingly reckon twenty-two societies wherein his authority would be regarded as law, and his teaching be faithfully preserved. But even these numerous foundations represent but a fraction of his real influence. Rightly to estimate the range of that influence, we must pass in review the men whom he educated, and who, scattered over the different parts of the severed empire as bishops or teachers, upheld long after his death the cause of religion and of letters. The most eminent of their His pupils: number was undoubtedly Lupus Servatus, whose character and career will claim a separate chapter. Another, whose name is frequently to be met with in the literature of these 1 Einhard (ed. Teulet), ii 45-6. 2 ... sophista et sui temporis poetarum nulli secundus.' Pertz, i 364. ""Sophistae," inquit sanctus Augustinus (lib. 2), appellantur, "Latinarum litterarum eloquentissimi auctores." Ducange, s. V. So in the epitaph of John Scotus, 'Conditur hoc tumulo sanctus sophista Joannes.' Christlieb, p. 47. Hauréau (Phil. Scholast. p. 142) infers, somewhat strangely, from the language of Rudolfus, that Rabanus was known as 'le Sophiste !' 3 Proleg. Migne, cvii 106–26. III. Walafrid CHAP. times, was Walafrid Strabo. His earlier education was gained at the monastery of Reichenau on the shores of lake Constance, where, as at the sister foundation of St. Gall, the teaching of Columban and the Irish school was still handed down with considerable success. From Reichenau Walafrid was sent to receive further instruction at Fulda-a fact that would lead us to infer, either that the rivalry between the Celtic and the Latin theologians did not altogether prevent friendly intercourse, or that the reputation of Rabanus' teaching was sufficiently great to overcome such jealousies. Walafrid returned after a time to Reichenau, and in the year 842 was elected abbat. But though he had learned much at Fulda, he does not appear to have acquired Rabanus' art as an administrator; and while learning flourished at Reichenau the affairs of the monastery were suffered to fall into irremediable confusion. The verses are still extant in which Walafrid bewails to his former teacher the state of the society, and begs of him the gift of a pair of shoes.' Walafrid, not improbably, inherited from Rabanus something of the latter's taste and skill in versification, for he was distinguished as a poet in his day; but his name was chiefly known to the Middle Ages as that of the author of the widely popular Glossa Ordinaria, a series of biblical expositions founded upon the lessons of his instructor at Fulda. Otfried of berg; Rudolfus. To the influence of Rabanus may perhaps also be referred the far better known efforts of the muse of Otfried, a member of the monastery of Weissenberg in Elsass, and the author of Der Krist. The pious monk had often listened to the strains of the strolling singers of his native country, and been scandalised at their coarseness; he aspired accordingly to direct the characteristic talent of his countrymen into happier channels. Hence his well-known production-a metrical harmony of the Gospels in the old High German dialect, the prototype of the lyric in Teutonic literature. More famous in his day than perhaps any of the foregoing was Rabanus' pupil and successor as instructor of Opera, vi 231. 1 III. the monastery school, the historian Rudolfus, the continu- СНАР. ator of the Annales Fuldenses from the point where Einhard dropped the pen-a preacher whose oratory was the special delight of Lewis the Pious—a scholar notable for his knowledge of Tacitus (probably from some manuscript that subsequently disappeared) in an age when that writer was otherwise un known. Hartmuat, Megin Names of minor note crowd on the attention of the student, and almost justify the assertion of one of Rabanus' biographers, that wherever, be it in peace or in war, in the Church or in State, a prominent actor appears at this period, we may almost predict beforehand that he will prove to have been a scholar of this great teacher.' Among them we may note Liutpert, abbat of the newly founded society at Liutpert, Corvey, to whom that society was indebted for much of its subsequent reputation-Hartmuat, who at St. Gall restored hard, and long maintained the discipline which had there fallen into decay-Meginhard, who, with strong Teutonic sympathies and a marked increase of historic power, carried on the work of Einhard and Rudolfus-Probus, whose saintly virtues made Fulda yet more illustrious, a gentle scholar who pleaded the claims of Cicero and Vergil to rank among the elect-Ermoldus, author of the lives of St. Sola and St. Hariolf. 2 Probus, involved in that Ra the theory banus was the While the services of Rabanus to his generation were Difficulties thus eminent and indisputable, it is to be regretted that anxiety to adorn a later movement with the sanction of a great name should have led certain writers to claim for him a distinction at variance with his entire reputation-the parentage of the nominalistic controversy. It was in his researches among the MSS. of Abelard and his disciples, by Cousin. preserved in the Imperial Library in Paris, that the late M. Cousin discovered a commentary on Boethius, which, on the doubtful authority of a marginal gloss, he ventured 1 Spengler, p. iv. 2. . . cujus casta conversatio et doctrinae sanctae studium Mogontinam illustravit ecclesiam.' Annal. Fuld. ann. 859, Pertz, i 373. author of the gloss discovered СНАР. III. to attribute to Rabanus.' It is right to add that his conclusion has received the support of M. Hauréau. According to this assumption, Rabanus, in addition to his other distinguished claims, appears as the author of a profound and able refutation of the reality of Universals. Unfortunately, however, two material facts, since pointed out by Kaulich and Prantl, seem fatal to such an hypothesis. Rabanus was already sixty-seven years of age when, in 844, he composed his treatise De Universo, in which, as we have before stated,' he follows Alcuin in dividing logic into dialectic and rhetoric; but in the manuscript in question logic is subdivided into grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic-a far from unimportant difference and one which Prantl does not hesitate to refer to the influence of the views put forth by John Scotus respecting the relation of grammar and rhetoric to dialectic. Again, it is evident that the commentary is designed as a reply to certain realistic doctrines, and, apart from the controversy raised by John Scotus, we have no evidence that this famous controversy was agitated in Frankland before the second half of the ninth century. But the arrival of John in Frankland belongs to the years 840-6, during which time Rabanus, as we shall shortly see, was leading a life of religious seclusion, and tranquilly composing his De Universo, in perfect ignorance, it may be presumed, of that new conception of logic which was being expounded at the court of Charles the Bald. It seems accordingly in the highest degree improbable that either at this period or in the years of his extreme old age, when busied with the duties of his episcopate and the refutation of Gotteschalk, he should have permitted himself to become involved in a sharp philosophical controversy, have reconsidered his classification of the arts and sciences, and composed a treatise altogether dissimilar to anything to be found in his acknowledged writings. The commentary in question was probably 1 An account of this gloss will be found in the author's History of the University of Cambridge, pp. 50-4. 2 See supra, p. 87. 3 Gesch. d. Logik, ii 38. Allerdings lässt sich nicht direct beweisen, dass Hrabanus denselben the work of a disciple or of some writer who had received his education at Fulda. CHAP. III. His sympathies as a politi the Pious Lothair. During the unhappy struggle which preceded the dissolution of the empire, Rabanus espoused the cause of the emperor against the sons. In this policy he was opposed to cian. Otgar, the archbishop, a zealous and ambitious partisan, with aims very different from those of the peace-loving abbat, intent solely on the interests of religion and the Church. While Otgar urged on the war, Rabanus quoted His loyalty examples from Scripture calculated to recall the unfilial to Lewis princes and disloyal nobility to their duty and allegiance; and and while the former, under the guise of zeal for the Church's laws, took an active part in the cruel deposition of Lewis at Soissons, the other openly maintained the invalidity of the proceedings. After the emperor's death, Rabanus attached himself to the party of Lothair, and his loyalty to that monarch remained unshaken. The results that followed upon the battle of Fontenay were, however, felt by him as a severe blow; and, having resigned his abbatship, he retired, He retires as Baugulfus had done before him, into religious seclusion.1 to PetersHe chose for his retreat the cell at Petersberg, and there, to quote the expression of Rudolfus, devoted himself to the study of heavenly philosophy,' 2—that is, in more prosaic lan- His guage, there compiled his De Universo (a feeble though writings laborious reproduction, with some additions, of the Ency- retirement. clopaedia of Isidorus); wrote also, at the request of the emperor Lothair, his commentary on Ezekiel; and further, at the request of Lewis the German, an exposition of the 'allegorical' sense of the hymns used in the services of the Church. The relations which he appears to have maintained, unmöglich verfasst haben könne, aber als sehr unwahrscheinlich müssen wir es immerhin bezeichnen.' Ibid. 'Der Gegensatz von Nominalisten und Realisten beginnt sich zwar im neunten Jahrhundert zu entwickeln, aber ihn bis auf Rabanus auszudehnen erscheint uns unrechtfertigt.' Kaulich, Gesch. d. Schol. Phil. i 62-3. 3 ibi manens ac deo serviens caelesti philosophiae vacabat' (quoted by Dümmler, p. 302). Opera, iv 196. It is to be noted that Rabanus pays a high tribute to the aviditas multa sciendi et copiose investigandi' exhibited by Lothair. berg. |