Klöster im Hochmittelalter

106 | Steven Vanderputten
graves were promoted as sites for pilgrimage; ² others lived on primarily in the collective
memory of the institutions they had been involved with, and in the writings
of medieval chroniclers and antiquarian historians of the early modern age. Collectively,
they also became the subject of a narrative tradition that represented them
as advocates of peace and justice in a world governed by political unrest and social
anarchy, and as ‘saviors’ or ‘restorers’ of Benedictine monasticism. Jean Mabillon
(† 1707), one of the fathers of modern historical scholarship, described their contribution
to monastic history as follows:
“through the invasions of the barbaric people and internal wars, which infested
Gaul as the Carolingian dynasty was declining, monastic discipline in
many monasteries had been corrupted to the point that it had almost vanished,
were it not for the fact that God had spurred into action men of significance,
who restored it through their own care and labour.” ³
Long regarded as a more or less objective if florid assessment of abbots’ historical
significance, these comments loudly resonated in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century
surveys of monastic history. Catholic historians, in particular Benedictine
monks writing the history of their order, appreciated both the supposedly heroic
aspect of abbots’ agency and the implied argument that, by saving monasticism from
a state of terminal decline, they had laid the foundations of the future Benedictine
Order. While many other scholars found it difficult to see much merit in celebrating
the hagiographic aspects of these individuals’ memory, they did rely on the idea of
a ‘restoration’ of Benedictine monasticism in the tenth and eleventh centuries to
frame the achievements of the aforementioned abbots in the emergence and blossoming
of a phenomenon known as ‘reform monasticism’. ⁴ ‘Reform monasticism’
was defined as a movement that, for the first time, aimed to enable monks to fully
2 Such was the case with Odilo of Cluny (see, among others, Dominique Iogna-Prat, Panorama de l’ha -
giographie abbatiale Clunisienne (v. 940 –v. 1140), in: Manuscrits hagiographiques et travail des hagiographes,
ed. Martin Heinzelmann (Francia. Beihefte der Francia 24), Sigmaringen 1992, pp. 77–118 and
Poppo of Stavelot (Philippe George, Un réformateur lotharingien de choc: l’abbé Poppon de Stavelot
(978 –1048), in: Revue Mabillon. N.S. 10, 1999, pp. 89 –111).
3 From Mabillon’s introduction to the Vita Richardi, ed. Lucas d’Achéry/Jean Mabillon/Thierry Ruinart,
in: Acta Sanctorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti, vol. 6,1, Paris 1701, p. 515: Barbarorum incursionibus
ac intestinis bellis, quae inclinante Carolovingiorum stirpe Gallias infestaverant, disciplina monastica
adeo labefactata erat in plerisque monasteriis, ut de ea prorsus actum fuisset, nisi Deus insignes viros
suscitasset, qui eam suis curis ac laboribus restaurassent.
4 The two most influential publications in this respect are Ernst Sackur, Die Cluniacenser in ihrer kirchlichen
und allgemeingeschichtlichen Wirksamkeit bis zur Mitte des elften Jahrhunderts, 2 vols., Halle an der
Saale 1892–1894 and Kassius Hallinger, Gorze-Kluny. Studien zu den monastischen Lebensformen und
Gegensätzen im Hochmittelalter, 2 vols. (Studia Anselmiana 22–25), Rome 1950 –1951, anastatic reprint
Graz 1971.