Urban Blight

While other history sites were celebrating the anniversary of the coronation of King Henry II yesterday, I was thinking about the anniversary of the death of Pope Urban V (1310-1370).

Born William de Grimoard to an aristocratic family, he became a Benedictine monk and later was abbot at the Abbey of St. Victor, where he made a tribute to John Cassian. He was sent to several universities to exercise his clever mind, and became an expert in Canon Law, the laws of the Church. He taught Canon Law at Avignon, Montpelier, and Paris. Returning to Avignon from a trip to Naples, where he had been sent by Pope Innocent IV, he found the pope dead. In the conclave that followed, no clear winner could be found, and Abbot William found himself being put forward as a compromise candidate. At this point, election of a pope required that the candidate be a cardinal, and William wasn't even a bishop. A hasty ordination was arranged.

Not a fan of ostentation, he continued to wear his Benedictine habit. A fan of education, he restored a school of medicine in Montpelier. His personal physician was the most-renowned surgeon of the day. He tried to restore the papacy to Rome from Avignon. He tried to get England to pay several years' worth of payments due the papacy, and clashed with Wycliffe over it. He attempted a Crusade against the Turks, which never got off the ground.

He also took a strong stand against heretics.

In 1363, he proclaimed the papal bull In caena Domini (At the table of the Lord), a collection of pronunciations of popes that merited excommunication for transgressors, and for which only the pope could give absolution. This bull, amended to include later papal injunctions, was repeated annually on Holy Thursday or Easter Monday. It listed infringements against papal authority as well as heresies, sacrileges, and other crimes. It was used to justify many an inquisition.

Over the centuries, rulers of Europe—both Catholic and Protestant—considered In caena Domini to be an infringement on their rights as sovereigns and complained. The annual recital of it was finally ended in 1770 by Pope Clement XIV.

Bishop & Bibliophile

The desirable treasure of wisdom and science, which all men desire by an instinct of nature, infinitely surpasses all the riches of the world; in respect of which precious stones are worthless; in comparison with which silver is as clay and pure gold is as a little sand; at whose splendour the sun and moon are dark to look upon; compared with whose marvellous sweetness honey and manna are bitter to the taste. ... Where dost thou chiefly lie hidden, O most elect treasure! and where shall thirsting souls discover thee? ... Certes, thou hast placed thy tabernacle in books, where the Most High, the Light of lights, the Book of Life, has established thee.

So begins Chapter I of the Philobiblon (Greek for "The Love of Books") of  Richard de Bury (1287-1345). As a young man he studied at Oxford and became a Benedictine. His learning and piety made him a suitable tutor for Prince Edward, son of Edward II and Isabella of France, who after the stormy events of 1327 would become King Edward III. Royal patronage worked well for de Bury: he became Bishop of Durham in 1333, High Chancellor in 1334, and Treasurer of England in 1336. He went on diplomatic missions for the Crown, even in his later years.

Along the way, however, he never gave up the love of learning that first sent him to Oxford and later made him a tutor to royalty. He had libraries in each residence, filled with contemporary authors but mostly classical works. "He kept copyists, scribes, binders, correctors, and illuminators, and he was particularly careful to restore defaced or battered texts." [source]

That love of learning, found in books, needed to be spread far and wide. His purpose for writing the Philobiblon was three-fold:

• To instill in clergy the love of learning, and of book as the source of learning
• To explain his own love of books that drove him to spend so much time collecting and preserving them
• To lay out the policies for management of a library he wanted to establish at Durham College, Oxford

His goal in founding Durham College was to create a place where Benedictines from Durham Abbey could better themselves through education. To that end, he bequeathed his books to the library at Durham College. Sadly, Durham College was dissolved, like many other religious institutions, by Henry VIII. Its memory remains as the Durham Quadrangle on the grounds of Trinity College. Tradition says that the library was broken up, some books going to Balliol, some to the part of the Bodleian called Duke Humphrey's Library, and some to the Welsh antiquarian George Owen (1552-1613).

Despite his connections with royalty, which many men would use as a path to a comfortable life, Richard de Bury's passion for the purchase and preservation of books would outweigh his means. When he died, on 14 April 1345, he was very much in debt. The Philobiblon did not see the light as a printed book until 1473 in Cologne, but numerous editions in various languages appeared over the next centuries, including an English edition in Albany, New York in 1861. It is available at the Gutenberg Project, and may be read (in English) here.

The Plan of St. Gall

In April 2013, near Meßkirch in southern Germany, construction will start on a monastery. It is expected to take 40 years to complete, because the builders will use 9th century tools to build it. This alone should be sufficient to ensure its celebrity on the Internet and in the hearts of medievalists.

But wait ... there's more. The design of the monastery complex is from a document that is 1200 years old. The Plan of St. Gall is a 122cm x 77.5cm manuscript that was discovered in 1844 when a pamphlet containing a 12th century life of St. Martin was unfolded. It shows the layout of 40 structures and spaces for gardens and orchards and a road. It includes 333 labels that identify the buildings and their purpose.

To be clear: the Plan of St. Gall isn't the actual layout of the monastery at St. Gall; the terrain wouldn't allow it. An inscription on the Plan tells us that it was a gift to the Abbot of St. Gall, Gozbertus (fl.816-837), who was responsible for having the monastery's church built in the 830s. According to the men* who brought the Plan to modern attention, it was based on a design made at two Carolingian reform synods held in 816 and 817 in Aachen intended to formalize Benedictine culture.

For modern scholars, its value is as a focal point for study about Carolingian monastic life and 9th century architecture. The ongoing "St. Gall Project," administered by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA, is not only creating the to-scale dimensions and models of the structures, it is also re-creating digitally the libraries of the monasteries at St. Gall and Reichenau (mentioned here). Despite the idealized nature of the design, it does have a carefully laid out scale based on multiples (and halves) of the number 40. Clearly there was careful thought put into the design. By constructing the "ideal" Benedictine monastery based on the St. Gall manuscript, and re-creating the monastic complex including the written works that would have informed its inhabitants, the project hopes to gain grater insight to the culture and mindset of the early 9th century.

*Medievalist Walter Horn and architect Ernest Born produced a three-volume analysis of the document in 1979, The Plan of St. Gall (Berkeley, Calif., University of California Press).