Klöster im Hochmittelalter

108 | Steven Vanderputten
of institutional realities. ⁷ This trend in scholarship has certainly been helpful to
demythologize the aforementioned reformers of the early eleventh century; but it
has also made them more enigmatic, and scholars nowadays seem unsure what to
think of them. The cause of this confusion in current historiography is the fact that
scholars have failed to appreciate that the primary objective of the reformers of the
early eleventh century was not to reform institutional monasticism, or monastic
discipline, but to incarnate a new conception of monastic leadership. Looking at the
behavior of Richard, abbot of Saint-Vanne († 1046), ⁸ I want to argue that reflections
on the issue of stability, on the moral self-sufficiency of ascetic virtuosi, and on
interactions with the secular world occupied a central position in the development
of this new abbatial ideology. Not abbots’ physical absences from their main institutions
bear relevance to these discussions, but the way in which they represented
their mobility as an instrument of self-perfection and universal salvation.
Monastic leadership and the Gregorian dialectic
As a former disciple of the cathedral school at Reims, ⁹ Richard had the same educational
background as a host of dignitaries who would contribute decisively to
the ecclesiastical and secular history of the early eleventh century, and to the development
of dogmatic and political thought. ¹⁰ Among these were the future King
Robert, the son of Hugh Capet; up to three sons of King Lothar, most notably
Arnulf, archbishop of Reims; Archbishop Leotheric of Sens; Bishops Fulbert of
Chartres, Bruno of Langres, Roger of Châlons-sur-Marne and Gerard of Cambrai;
Ingomen, abbot of Saint-Martin in Massay and Saint-German in Paris; and
Constantine, scholaster at Fleury and then abbot of Micy near Orléans; others,
like Abbot Abbo of Fleury and Bishop Adalbero of Laon came to Reims to re-
7 As recently argued in Steven Vanderputten, Monastic Reform as Process. Realities and Representations
in Medieval Flanders, 900 –1100, Ithaca/London 2013.
8 On Richard, see in first place Hubert Dauphin, Le Bienheureux Richard, abbé de Saint-Vanne de
Verdun † 1046 (Bibliothèque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 24), Louvain/Paris 1946 and Frank
G. Hirschmann, Klosterreform und Grundherrschaft. Richard von St. Vanne, in: Grundherrschaft –
Kirche – Stadt zwischen Maas und Rhein während des hohen Mittelalters, ed. Alois Haverkamp/Frank
G. Hirschmann (Trierer historische Forschungen 37), Mainz 1997, pp. 125 –170.
9 Hugh of Flavigny, Chronicon, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz, in: MGH Scriptores 8, Hannover 1848, pp.
280 –503, here p. 368.
10 On the Reims school, see in first place Pierre Riché, Gerbert d’Aurillac. Le pape de l’an Mil, Paris 1987,
pp. 35 –56; Charles Stephen Jaeger, The Envy of Angels. Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval
Europe 950 –1200, Philadelphia 1994, pp. 56 – 62 and 75 – 83; and Jason Glenn, Politics and History
in the Tenth Century. The Work and World of Richer of Reims (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and
Thought 4,60), Cambridge/New York 2004, pp. 54 – 69.