Klöster im Hochmittelalter

120 | Steven Vanderputten
gious and ecclesiastical leadership through preaching and action. It is nevertheless
important to reflect upon these issues, for the 1020s marked a significant transition
in Richard’s life. His gradual withdrawal as abbot from various institutions in Cambrai
(in the early 1020s) and Liège (early 1030s, with conflicts with the local bishops
starting presumably as early as the mid-1020s), his pilgrimage to the Holy Land in
1026 –1027, and his eremitical phase in the 1030s, all indicate that the exercise of abbatial
office did not fully satisfy his spiritual needs. This is significant, for as we have
seen, the Vita Rodingi takes an ambiguous position in the debate over which form
of withdrawal – eremitism or cenobitism – offered the best chances for spiritual perfection.
Likewise, we do not know exactly when one of the key sources of the Vita
Rodingi, the Vita Magnerici, which also comments on these issues, was composed.
But we do know its author, a monk named Eberwin, a personal acquaintance of
Richard’s who combined the abbacies of Saint-Martin in Trier and perhaps also that
of Saint-Paul in Verdun, with that of Tholey, and is attested in the primary evidence
from c. 1018 to c. 1036. Eberwin’s most notable achievement is the creation of a
body of texts which all concerned Saint-Martin’s historical antecedents: the Vita
Magnerici, a treatise entitled Calamities of the abbey of Saint-Martin in Trier, and
antiphons and responsories for the feast of St Magneric. The Life of Magneric, itself
modeled on the Life of St Paul, sketches the history of the abbey up to the Merovingian
age, arguing that it had been a Benedictine institution from its inception,
and underscoring the monks’ cordial relations with saintly hermits, several of whom
subsequently converted to a cenobitical existence. ⁵¹ If Haubrichs’ tentative dating of
post-1024 for the works devoted to Magneric and Saint-Martin is correct, then the
Vita Magnerici’s composition took place near a time of intensive contact between
Eberwin and Richard, for in 1026 –1027, Eberwin joined Richard on his pilgrimage
to the Holy Land. ⁵² In addition to the experiences they shared on this journey, the
two men were both particularly interested in the tension between eremitism and
cenobitism as competing ways of pursuing moral perfection and spiritual self-sufficiency,
and in finding ways to justify both existences as equally valid. Eberwin,
although he was a Benedictine abbot, promoted saintly hermits, as indicated in
the Vita Magnerici (in the person of St Wolfilaic), ⁵³ but particularly so in his Vita
Symeonis, which documents an extreme case of a man constantly wavering between
both worlds without yet losing his spiritual integrity. ⁵⁴ In the text, pilgrimage and
51 Haubrichs, Die Tholeyer Abtslisten (note 41 above), pp. 164 –166.
52 Haubrichs, Die Tholeyer Abtslisten (note 41 above), pp. 167 f.
53 In the Life, Magneric convinces Wolfilaic to enter the monastery (Vita sancti Magnerici (note 49 above),
pp. 189 f.).
54 Eberwin of Tholey, Vita sancti Symeonis, ed. Godefridus Henschenius/Daniel van Papenbroeck, in:
Acta Sanctorum Junii, vol. 1, Antwerp 1685, col. 89 –95.