Anastasius Bibliothecarius

Anastasius Bibliothecarius was born about 810CE, a nephew of Bishop Arsenius of Orte. At some point in his youth he learned Greek, which made him a valuable scholar and later earned him a prized position as papal archivist.

In his 40s, he was a monk, the abbot of Santa Maria in Trastavere, but was used by the popes for various missions and tasks. He translated many Greek works into Latin, and his style of writing shows up in several documents that were supposedly written by popes. (It is possible that he took their dictation and put his own style into what they wanted to say rather than taking it down verbatim.)

Holy Roman Emperor Louis II sent him to Constantinople to help negotiate a marriage between Louis' daughter Ermengard and Constantine, eldest son of Eastern Emperor Basil I. This was in 869, and the Fourth Council of Constantinople was taking place when they arrived. Anastasius attended the final session and defended the papal demands to have more jurisdiction over Bulgaria and the East. The marriage negotiations failed, or maybe they didn't; historians argue about that.

As the papal legates returned from that Council, the document with all the decisions was stolen from them. A copy of the declarations in Greek was in the possession of Anastasius, however, who was able to deliver his copy to Rome and translate it into Latin. The original Greek version is lost. The Council had deposed patriarch Photios, but Anastasius kept in touch with him.

After Pope Nicholas died and Adrian II became pope, Anastasius was named official papal librarian, hence the epithet Bibliothecarius. Anastasius was implicated in a plot that killed Adrian's wife and daughter, but Adrian's successor, Pope John VIII (872 - 882) confirmed him as librarian and encouraged him to write. The illustration shows an early vellum page with part of Anastasius' history of the Byzantine Church.

(A contemporary, Archbishop Hincmar of Reims, writing a history of the time, claims that Anastasius was the same Anastasius who was briefly an anti-pope at the time of Pope Benedict III (855 - 858). That Anastasius was driven from Rome in 848, excommunicated in 850 by the Roman synod, nd deposed by another synod in 853. It seems unlikely that he would have been welcomed into the papacy a couple decades later.)

In 879, a new librarian appears in papal records, Zacharias of Anagni, so by that time Anastasius had probably died or simply retired.

So what happened to poor Ermengard, daughter of the emperor, who was looking for a husband and did not find one in Constantinople? We'll see what happened to her tomorrow.

The Holy Ampulla

Many years ago, I posted how Clovis I (c.466 - 511) was the first king of the Franks to be converted to Christianity, influenced by his Christian wife Clotilde and St. Rémy (also known as Remigius). There is a legend about his baptism that says that just as he was about to be baptized, a dove flew down from above carrying a vial of chrism, the oil needed for anointing.

That legend, however, was a later creation and seemed based on an earlier miracle of St. Rémy, called the "Legend of the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan." In this legend, when Rémy (c.437 - 533) was the Bishop of Reims, a dying pagan requested baptism, but there was no oil for anointing. Rémy asked that two vials be placed on the altar, and as he prayed they miraculously filled with a chrism that gave off an unearthly fragrance.

At the time of Archbishop Hincmar of Reims (806 - 882), Rémy's sepulcher was opened and found to contain two vials of oil. In a clever piece of marketing, Hincmar combined the discovery of the vials, the story of the pagan, and the knowledge that Rémy baptized Clovis, into a new legend that allowed him to declare that French kings in the future should all be crowned at Reims Cathedral and anointed with the miraculous oil that Reims possessed.

The Holy Ampulla is about 1.5 inches tall and made of Roman glass. Its use was first noted at the coronation of Louis VII in 1131, and the connection to Clovis and Rémy was made common knowledge. Its last use for a coronation (for a time) was that of Louis XVI in 1775, because it the ampoule was destroyed.

The illustration above is not the Holy Ampulla found in the tomb of St. Rémy. During the French Revolution, symbols of monarchy were routinely vandalized. Fearing the invasion of the cathedral, a cleric drained the chrism from the ampoule. Shortly after, a revolutionary smashed the ampoule. The fragments were saved by several of the faithful, and in 1823 they were brought together. A reliquary was ordered by Louis XVIII to house the fragments, and a new glass bulb was created to hold the oil. It is still preserved at the Saint-Rémi Basilica in Reims. The new Holy Ampulla and its contents were used for the coronation of Charles X in 1825.

And speaking of French kings, we've never said much about Louis VII, although he is connected to several posts of the past, including having one of the most amazing women of the Middle Ages divorce him for a younger man. Let's give Louis his due tomorrow.

The Utrecht Psalter

Vellum—fine parchment made from the skin of a calf—is more durable than paper. Even so, manuscripts that survived for centuries are precious, and sometimes we have them only due to extraordinary measures taken by individuals.

One such individual was Sir Robert Cotton, whose hobby was collecting old manuscripts of all kinds in his personal library. Despite a fire that destroyed some, there are countless things we know about the Middle Ages that we would not know except for his collection, including poems such as Beowulf. One unique manuscript that he collected was the Utrecht Psalter. (I should say "near-unique" for reasons explained a little later.)

A psalter is the Book of Psalms from the Bible. The word psalter is Old English (p)saltere from Latin psalterium from Greek psaltērion and means a stringed instrument. (Remember that the Psalms are songs.) This particular psalter came to the Cotton Library from Canterbury Cathedral some time after the Dissolution of the Monasteries (in the 1530s when Henry VII changed things). Robert had the pages bound, and then lent the manuscript to the Earl of Arundel, who took it into exile in the Netherlands (during the English Civil War in the 1640s); upon his death it was sold, and somehow wound up in the library of Utrecht University by 1716.

One of its distinguishing features is the style of art. Each vellum page contains a psalm, and the background of each page illustrates every image from each line of the psalm in understated color called bistro, a shade of brown or grayish brown. The pages are 10x13 inches—an unusually large size choice, unless it were intended to be used by several people reading/singing at once. It might have been a monks choir book rather than intended for personal instruction, as the mnemonic device of the illustrations would suggest.

Created in the 800s during the Carolingian period, it influenced a style that is called the "Utrecht style." There are at least three copies that were made of it prior to its acquisition by Cotton: the Harley Psalter (in the British Library), the Edwin Psalter (at Trinity College, Cambridge), and the full-color-with-gold-backgrounds Anglo-Catalan Psalter (so-called because it was half-illustrated by an English artist in 1180-1200 and finished in Catalan in 1340-50 in a different style), in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

But whence came the original? An argument is made for it originating near Reims, because the style is similar to the Ebbo Gospels, suggesting that, like them, the psalter was sponsored by Archbishop Ebbo of Reims. Also, some believe the illustrations draw from details that would have been gleaned from the travels of none other than or recent predestination heretic, Gottschalk of Orbais. Besides psalms, it includes the Athanasian Creed, to which Ebbo's successor Archbishop Hincmar of Reims was partial.

This puts it in the vicinity of Hautvillers, which gives me a reason to re-visit Hautvillers and clear up a few details about which I was terribly neglectful yesterday. Tomorrow I answer the question: what about that dove?

Gottschalk of Orbais

I believe and confess that omnipotent and unchangeable God foreknew and predestined saint angels and elect men to eternal life gratis and that He equally predestined devil, head of all demons, with all of his apostates, and also reprobate men, namely his members, on account of their own most certainly foreknown evil merits, through the most right judgment to deserved eternal death; for thus says the Lord himself in His Gospel: “The prince of this world is already judged”

So wrote Gottschalk of Orbais (c.808 - 30 October 868 CE). He studied at Fulda Monastery in Germany where he became friends with Strabo and studied under Hrabanus Maurus. His first act of "rebellion" was being ordained in France (where he joined the Abbey at Corbie) not by his bishop, but by the local choriepiscopus of Rheims, a lesser functionary in the bishop's. By 840 he had left France for Italy where he preached his views on predestination, before being driven out by Hrabanus Maurus who at that time had become Archbishop of Mainz.

He preached and gained followers in Germany until the Synod of Mainz in 848. It was presided over by Hrabanus Maurus with King Louis the German present. Gottschalk was declared heretical, beaten, and for hidden to return to the Kingdom of Francia under Louis the German. He was sent to Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims to be kept under confinement, but he continued to preach his double predestination.

Six months after the Synod of Mainz was the Council of Quierzy—with Archbishop Hincmar and King Charles the Bald—at which Gottschalk's preachings were questioned again; this time, however, there was no calm theological debate. When Gottschalk refused to accept that is interpretation of Augustine was wrong, he turned to verbal abuse of his opponents. He was defrocked (both in the sacerdotal and sartorial sense), beaten, and imprisoned in a monastery at Hautvillers for the next 20 years, until his death.

Hautvillers; now there's a place worth talking about. Next time.

St. Rémy

In the history of medieval Christianity, there are stories of entire countries converting all at once. The tale of St. Rémy (c.437-533) is one.

St. Rémy baptizes Clovis

Rémy, also known as Remigius, was born to a very prominent Gallo-Roman family in Laon. He studied literature at Reims. His reputation for piety and learning was so great that at the age of 22 he was appointed Archbishop of Reims. Clovis I, King of the Franks (reigned 481-511), had a Christian wife, the Burgundian Clotilde. Clovis was friendly and generous to the church in Reims. Rémy decided to make it his life's work to Christianize the Frankish kingdom.

One legend in particular attests to the good relations between the king and the archbishop. When Clovis conquered Soissons under Syagrius in 486, his soldiers plundered the church there. St. Rémy asked Clovis to return, if nothing else, at least the very special Vase of Soissons, one of the greatest pieces owned by the church of Soissons. Clovis agreed, claiming the Vase as his own part of the booty, but the soldier who had taken it was angry at having to give it up and broke it irreparably. Clovis returned the pieces to the church; a year later, he had that soldier killed with his own axe, telling him "Just as you did to the vase at Soissons!"

According to chronicler Gregory of Tours (writing a century later), Clovis agreed to convert to Christianity after his 496 victory at Tolbiac: he had prayed to his wife's God after seeing so many of his men being killed against the Alemanni tribes. We are told that the Alemanni began to flee at the completion of Clovis' prayer. Clovis agreed to be baptized; it was performed by St. Rémy, along with the baptisms of 3000 Franks.

More specifically, Clovis was baptized into Roman Catholic Christianity, which helped to make a distinction between him and the other German tribes establishing themselves in Europe. Groups like the Visigoths and Vandals were Christians, but had embraced Arianism, which by this time was deemed heretical. The choice of Clovis brought him into the favor of Rome and aligned him with the more mainstream version of Christianity. This was a major event in the life of St. Rémy, who is now considered the patron saint of France. St. Rémy also supposedly converted an Arian bishop to Roman views at a synod Rémy held in 517.

Of his writings, all are lost except for a few letters, two of which are to Clovis. A legend that attached itself to St. Rémy is the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan. When a dying pagan asked for baptism, Rémy discovered that he did not have the chrism—the sacred oils—needed to perform the ceremony. He placed two empty vials on the altar and prayed, whereupon they were filled with the two oils needed. When his crypt was opened during the reign of Charles the Bald (823-877), they found two vials containing very aromatic oils. Scholars have hemmed and hawed over these. Were they actually the two vials of the legend? Were they two vials placed symbolically in the coffin because of the legend? Or were they two vials of perfumes placed in the coffin to cover the odor of putrefaction?*

To the Archbishop of Reims at the time, Hincmar, it was clear: these vials confirmed the Legend of the Baptism of the Moribund Pagan. Clearly, the oil was that very same used for Baptism, and since Rémy also baptized King Clovis, it was clear (to Hincmar) that Reims ought to be recognized as the appropriate church for the future anointing of the Kings of France. Any relics associated with him (the locations of the two vials are no longer known for certain) now reside in the Abbey of Saint-Rémy in Reims.

*This particular theory also points out that the method of making perfumed oils was known to the Romans, but lost to Europe by the time of the Carolingians. In the 800s, they would have seemed miraculous, since the art of making perfume was unknown.