Identity and sanctity in early medieval bavaria

This project examines early medieval hagiography as transmitted in late Agilolfing and Carolingian Bavaria (8th/9th centuries) in context. Building on Bischoff`s lists of manuscripts, the project aims at systematically collecting information about the way in which hagiographic texts were assembled and reworked in 8th/9th century Bavarian manuscripts. Some of the manuscripts will be studied in detail for an exemplary view of the aims and methods of hagiographic compilations in the period. A comparison to selected manuscripts from neighbouring regions may help to clarify what is specific about the way in which saints were perceived in the region under scrutiny. The study of Bavarian hagiography so far has concentrated on some important saints` lives written in the area (the Lives of Rupert, Emmeram and Corbinian). The project purports to see these lives in the context of a considerable body of hagiographical writings assembled and copied in Bavarian scriptoria (the "Südostdeutsche Schreibschulen" identified by Bischoff) in the period. Furthermore, it will analyze this wide range of hagiographical writings in their manuscript context (that sometimes comprises other genres). This study will provide new insights into the role of sanctity in society, into the political function of specific saints, and into the cultural models propagated in early medieval hagiography. It could help to explain why the memory of certain saints, many of whom had lived long ago and far away, was preserved, recast or even intensified. Thus, new light can be shed on why and how late antique and Merovingian hagiography was trasmitted (in many cases, only through Carolingian copies), and what may have been reworked in the process, a question of great interest to the history of the Merovingian period (6th-early 8th century). At the same time, it allows glimpses into the attitudes and specific interests current in Bavarian scriptoria of the 8th and 9th centuries, when these texts were copied and often changed. Thus, the proposed project is also an exemplary study on the uses of the past in hagiography. Even more than in historiography, hagiographic manuscripts assembled texts from very diverse backgrounds, creating distinctive landscapes of sanctity that have only recently come into the focus of scholarly interest. Thus, hagiographic compilations helped to define the identities of monastic and ecclesiastical communities, but also influenced the social memories in the networks of lay aristocrats that supported them. The project by its innovative approach should allow new insights into culture and society of the Carolingian period that will be methodologically significant beyond its thematic scope.

The purpose of the project was to investigate the transmission, dissemination and context of hagiographical texts in Bavaria in the 8th and 9th centuries. On the one hand the texts were analysed in accordance with the criteria of contemporary approaches of textual critique and historical auxiliary sciences. On the other hand the project was embedded in the theories of the Viennese School of Ethnogenesis at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The results form a contribution to an understanding of the development of early medieval identities in and around Bavaria. Hagiographical texts can be understood as resources for the construction of identities, which remained available to later compilers. The analysis of the manuscript contexts provide today a different view on the use of hagiography in general and particularly in early medieval Bavaria. In-depth study of the réécriture of selected texts brought numerous results. In this way specific changes could be identified even in Passiones, whose contexts for transmission, until now, have not been sufficiently investigated. The selected texts were analysed as integral parts of manuscripts, rather than as more or less authentic variations of a hypothetical "master text". From this starting point, as far as possible, the separate compendia were considered in the context of the library which was available around the time that the compendium came into existence. A common purpose could sometimes even be detected between manuscripts of rather different type or content. The investigation of the works as parts making up a whole ensemble permitted new and important insights to be made into the transformations taking place in the social sphere, most significantly in Salzburg during the time of Archbishop Arn. The time of the great upheavals in Bavaria around 800 gave rise to a great number of hagiographical manuscripts, whose investigation has caused the historical occurrences of this time to appear in a wholly different light. Hagiographical texts served not only as an expression of the spiritual identity of a community, but also as an instrument for the assertion of episcopal power. The extensive re-writing of hagiographical texts not only was adapted to the norms propagated in capitularies and synods. It was also directed at gaining control over texts, which were available in large numbers and a range of variations in the Bavarian libraries and offered too many undesirable interpretative possibilities. Salzburg, above all, certainly had a decidedly broader-reaching hagiographical tradition to show for itself than has been assumed by research until now.