DOI Artikel:
Vanderputten, Steven: The Mind as Cell and the Body as Cloister: Abbatial Leadership and the Issue of Stability in the Early Eleventh Century
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31468#0120
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more eremitical ways of life existed alongside each other, and how individuals from
both environments became saints. The Life celebrates those hermits who were devoted
to prayer, vigils, and fasting; but at the end of chapter 5, the saint convinces
one such man to enter the monastery. Here too, the echoes of Richard’s own life
resonate loudly.
Even though the literal borrowing from the Lives of Madalveus and Magneric is
limited, the mere reference in the Vita Rodingi to these texts is revealing. In addition
to helping him paint a picture of the ideal abbot, by drawing on the bishops’ Lives
Richard was able to augment this narrative project with discussions of the ideal religious
leader’s involvement in the conversion of the secular world, and the struggle
of a religious virtuoso to achieve what one might call spiritual self-sufficiency. The
Life of Madalveus focuses on its subject’s virtues, his hankering for seclusion, and
his devotion to the figure of Christ; in addition, it highlights his apostolic agency,
justice, and promotion of penance. Magneric’s biography, while equally laudatory
of his inclination towards prayer and asceticism, is more concerned with its subject’s
position of moral authority among the highest of secular rulers, and explicitly
addresses the issue of the relationship between eremitism and cenobitism as two
different means of achieving religious perfection.
It seems reasonable to think that the implicit references to these texts are suggestive
of the fact that Richard was aiming to construct a discourse that transcended
the significance of St Roding, and related to Richard’s own life and thinking. The
same is true for the assumption that Richard was more preoccupied by the question
of how to be an ideal religious leader and virtuoso, than how to be an abbot.
Considered togheter, his Life of Roding, and the arguments found in the three bishop’s
lives he used to compile it, suggest that he saw no fundamental contradiction
between secular ecclesiastical leadership and its monastic counterpart, and in fact
regarding one fundamental attitude, the pursuit of spiritual perfection, as legitimizing
the exercise of both functions.
Stages of withdrawal
The Mind as Cell and the Body as Cloister | 119
Given the problematic dating of the Vita Rodingi – between c. 1015 and Richard’s
death in 1046 ⁵⁰ – and of several of the texts used to compile it, it is hazardous to
speculate on whether Richard first theorized his own behavior and then carried
out these ideas, or saw the writing of the Life of Roding as an extension of his reli-
50 Especially Haubrichs, Die Tholeyer Abtslisten (note 41 above), p. 98 and 167.
both environments became saints. The Life celebrates those hermits who were devoted
to prayer, vigils, and fasting; but at the end of chapter 5, the saint convinces
one such man to enter the monastery. Here too, the echoes of Richard’s own life
resonate loudly.
Even though the literal borrowing from the Lives of Madalveus and Magneric is
limited, the mere reference in the Vita Rodingi to these texts is revealing. In addition
to helping him paint a picture of the ideal abbot, by drawing on the bishops’ Lives
Richard was able to augment this narrative project with discussions of the ideal religious
leader’s involvement in the conversion of the secular world, and the struggle
of a religious virtuoso to achieve what one might call spiritual self-sufficiency. The
Life of Madalveus focuses on its subject’s virtues, his hankering for seclusion, and
his devotion to the figure of Christ; in addition, it highlights his apostolic agency,
justice, and promotion of penance. Magneric’s biography, while equally laudatory
of his inclination towards prayer and asceticism, is more concerned with its subject’s
position of moral authority among the highest of secular rulers, and explicitly
addresses the issue of the relationship between eremitism and cenobitism as two
different means of achieving religious perfection.
It seems reasonable to think that the implicit references to these texts are suggestive
of the fact that Richard was aiming to construct a discourse that transcended
the significance of St Roding, and related to Richard’s own life and thinking. The
same is true for the assumption that Richard was more preoccupied by the question
of how to be an ideal religious leader and virtuoso, than how to be an abbot.
Considered togheter, his Life of Roding, and the arguments found in the three bishop’s
lives he used to compile it, suggest that he saw no fundamental contradiction
between secular ecclesiastical leadership and its monastic counterpart, and in fact
regarding one fundamental attitude, the pursuit of spiritual perfection, as legitimizing
the exercise of both functions.
Stages of withdrawal
The Mind as Cell and the Body as Cloister | 119
Given the problematic dating of the Vita Rodingi – between c. 1015 and Richard’s
death in 1046 ⁵⁰ – and of several of the texts used to compile it, it is hazardous to
speculate on whether Richard first theorized his own behavior and then carried
out these ideas, or saw the writing of the Life of Roding as an extension of his reli-
50 Especially Haubrichs, Die Tholeyer Abtslisten (note 41 above), p. 98 and 167.