Last Things

by Bynum, Caroline Walker; Freedman, Paul;

  65. Visio Baronti 12, ed. Wilhelm Levison, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 5 (Hanover: Hahn, 1910), 386; Ciccarese, Visioni, 254; trans. in J. N. Hillgarth, Christianity and Paganism, 350–750: The Conversion of Western Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 199.

  66. Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 638.

  67. Visio Baronti 22, 354; Hillgarth, Christianity and Paganism, 204, citing Gregory, Homilies on the Gospels 2.8, 14.6, 32.8.

  68. Arnold Angenendt, Das Frühmittelalter: Die ahendländische Christenheit von 400 bis 900 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1990), 147–58.

  69. Muirchu, Vita Patricii 2.6.1, ed. Ludwig Bieler, The Patrician Texts in the Book of Armagh (Dublin: Institute of Advanced Studies, 1979), 116.

  70. Aethelwulf, De abbatibus, line 6, ed. Alistair Campbell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 3 and n.1.

  71. Landndmabok S91/H79, ed. Jakob Benediktsson (Reykjavik: Islenzk Fornrit, 1968), 132–34.

  72. Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1966), 16.

  73. Eva Riad, “Safa‘a dans le Coran,” Orientalia Suecana 30 (1981): 37–62, at pp. 37–42; and Taede Huitema, De Voorspraak (Shafa‘a) in den Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1936), 45, 56.

  74. Al-Bukhari, Sahih 76.19.476, ed. Muhammad Muhsin Khan (Beirut: Dar al-Arabia, 1985), 8: 316.

  75. Al-Bukhari, Sahih 76.49.574, p. 374; Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1981), 84.

  76. Gregory, Dialogi 4.43.2, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé Dialogues, Sources chrétiennes 265 (Paris: Le Cerf, 1980), 154–55; see Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 187–89.

  77. Eustratius, De animis defunctorum, 9, in Leo Allatius, De utriusque ecclesiae occidentalis et orientalis perpetua in dogmate de purgatorio consensione (Rome, 1655), 380–580, p. 373; see H. G. Beck, Kirche und theologische Literatur im byzantinischen Reich (Munich: C. H. Beck 1959), 411. On the background of such doubts, see Vincent Déroche, “Pourquoi écrivait-on des recueils des miracles?: l’exemple des miracles de saint Artémius,” in Les saints et leur sanctuaire à Byzance, Byzantina Sorbonensia 11, ed. Catherine Jolivet-Lévy et al. (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1993), 95–116, esp. 113–16. See also L. S. B. MacCoull, “The Monophysite Angelology of John Philoponus,” Byzantion 65 (1995): 388–95.

  78. Eustratius, De animis 28, Allatius, 561–63.

  79. Gregory, Dialogi 4.42.1–5, ed. de Vogüé, 150–54; compare the doublet cultor pauperum et contemptor sui used of Paschasius with Diehl, Inscriptiones latinae christianae veteres, no. 1195.10: pauperibus dives sed sibi pauper erat and 1778.6: pauperibus locuples, sibi pauper. See now A. Wirbelauer, Zwei Pàpste in Rom: Der Konflikt zwischen Laurentius und Symmachus (498–514) (Munich: Tuduv, 1993).

  80. Gregory, Dialogi 4.42.5, ed. de Vogué, 154.

  81. Angenendt, Das Frühmittelalter, 155.

  82. Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 96.

  83. R. Meens, “Willibrords boeteboek?” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 106 (1993): 163–78; “A Background to Augustine’s Mission to Anglo-Saxon England,” Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994): 5–17; “Pollution in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of Food Regulations in the Penitentials,” Early Medieval Europe 4 (1995): 3–19; now Het tripartite boeteboek: overlevering en beteknis van vroegmiddeleeuwse biechtvoorschrfiten (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994), 267–321, and now “Ritual Purity and the Influence of Gregory the Great in the Early Middle Ages,” in Unity and Diversity in the Church, ed. R. N. Swanson, Studies in Church History 32 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 31–43.

  84. A. J. Festugière, La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste, vol. 2, Le Dieu cosmique (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1981), 441–46 on the Dream of Scipio.

  85. Boniface, Epistula 115, ed. Michael Tangl, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistulae selectae (Berlin: Weidmann, 1916), 248; Ciccarese, Visioni, 366, 370–72. See Carozzi, Voyage de l’âme, 200–222.

  86. J. C. Schmitt, “Une histoire religieuse du Moyen-Age est-elle possible?” in Il mestiere del storico del Medioevo (Spoleto: Centro di Studi sull’Alto Medio Evo, 1994), 73–83, at p. 82: “Dieu n’est plus maître de toute l’espace et de tout le temps: c’est le sens de la nouvelle doctrine de purgatoire.”

  From Jericho to Jerusalem: The Violent Transformation of Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne

  This is a revised and expanded version of a paper presented at Columbia University’s Seventh Annual Medieval Guild Conference in October 1996. It grew out of research conducted during a year-long seminar at Columbia with Caroline Walker Bynum, to whose many patient readings and incisive criticisms this essay owes a great debt and for whose generous enthusiasm and support I am immensely grateful. Many thanks also go to the other members of the seminar, especially Anna Harrison and Manuele Gragnolati, for the fruitful dialogues we carried on throughout the year and to Christopher Ranney for his insightful readings and comments.

  1. The best edition of the text is the Vita et miracula Engelberti, ed. Fritz Zschaeck in Alfons Hilka, ed., Die Wundergeschichten des Caesarius von Heisterbach, Publikationen der Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde 43 (Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlag, 1937), 3: 234–328; hereafter VE (all citations are from this edition and all translations are my own). A German translation was published by Karl Langosch as Leben, Leiden und Wunder des heiligen Erzbischofs Engelbert von Köln (Die Geschichtsschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit 100) (Münster/Cologne: Bühlau Verlag, 1955). On the place of the Vita within Caesarius’s oeuvre, see Langosch’s entry “Caesarius von Heisterbach” in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon (Vol. I), ed. Kurt Ruh et al. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978, cols. 1152–68; hereafter DVL.

  2. For a valuable methodological discussion of the documentary value of saints’ lives and related materials, see Friedrich Lotter, “Methodisches zur Gewinnung historischer Erkenntnisse aus hagiographischen Quellen,” Historische Zeitschrift 229 (1979): 299–355.

  3. Surius published a reworked Vita in his 1575 De probatis Sanctorum historiis VI, and that text provided the basis for Aegidius Gelenius’s Vindex libertatis ecclesiasticae et martyr S. Engelbertus . . . una cum brevi suae aetatis annalium . . . editione (Cologne, 1633); see K. Langosch’s introduction to the German translation (1955), 23. Surius’ name appeared in the Martyrology for the first time in 1583: Coloniae sancti Engelberti episcopi, qui pro defensione ecclesiasticae libertatis et romanae ecclesiae obedientia martyrium subire non dubitavit. See Albert Poncelet, Acta Sanctorum, vol. 71 (November), Part III (Antwerp: Meursius, 1910), 643–44 (hereafter AASS); and Niccolo del Ré’s entry in the Bibliotheca Sanctorum IV (Rome: Instituto Giovanni XXIII, 1964), cols. 1209–10.

  4. The shrine, created in 1633 by the studio of Konrad Duisbergh, is discussed and reproduced in the exhibition catalogue Erzbischöfe von Köln: Porträts—Insignien—Weihe, ed. Rolf Lauer (Cologne: Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum, 1989): 24–25 and plate 5.

  5. See the entry in the exhibition catalogue Bilder vom Menschen in der Kunst des Abendlandes: Jubiläumsausstellung der Preußischen Museen Berlin, 1830–1980 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1980), 125.

  6. The following account of Engelbert’s reign is drawn from the Vita, Liber I (De vita et actibus domini Engilberti Coloniensis archiepiscopi et martiris) 235–49; supplemented by Richard Knipping, ed., Die Regesten der Erzbischöfe von Köln im Mittelalter III: 1 (=Publikationen der Gesellschaft für Rheinische Geschichtskunde 21), (Bonn: Peter Hansteins Verlag, 1909), 26–88; and Julius Ficker’s Engelbert der Heilige: Erzbischof von Koln und Reichsverweser (Cologne, 1853; rep. Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1985), 53–144, which also contains documents pertaining to his career. A more concise but less complete account is Hans Foerster, Engelbert von Berg der Heilige (Elberfeld: Martini and Gruttefien, 1925).

  7. On the family Berg, see Ficker, Engelbert der Heilige (1853), 14–16.

  8. On the turbulent reigns of Archbishops Adolf I of Altena
(1193–1205, 1212–16), Bruno IV of Sayn (1205–8), and Dietrich I of Hengebach (1208–12), see Knipping, Regesten (1909), 1–25; Ficker, Engelbert der Heilige (1853), 18–52; and VE I: 3, 238–40.

  9. VE I: 6, 244–45.

  10. On Engelbert’s building activities and generosity in making donations to ecclesiastical establishments, VE I: 5, 241–44; on his assertion of control over secular lords, ibid. and VE I: 4, 240–41; on his welcoming of the mendicants in 1220 (Dominicans) and 1222 (Franciscans) in spite of public concerns that they represented the fulfillment of a frightening prophecy of Hildegard of Bingen, VE I: 7, 245–46. On Engelbert’s relation to the mendicants, see J. Greven, “Engelbert der Heilige und die Bettelorden,” Bonner Zeitschrift für Theologie und Seelsorge 2 (1925). On the oppressive state of affairs in the decades preceding Engelbert’s reign, VE I: 3, 238–40, I: 4, 240–41.

  11. Engelbert hears poor people’s complaints, VE I: 7, 246; gives his glove as token of safe passage to a fearful merchant, VE I: 5, 242; allows a woman to bypass lawyers and state her case to him directly, VE I: 8, 246; orders on-the-spot hearing of a widow’s complaint against him, overturns ruling in his favor, and pays her her debts, VE II: 5, 256–57.

  12. See the Vita as translated by Dom Gerard Sitwell in St. Odo of Cluny, Makers of Christendom (London: Sheed and Ward, 1958), 89–180.

  13. André Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1981), 341, and note 26 below. See also the accounts in Stephanie Coué, “Acht Bischofsviten aus der Salierzeit—neu interpretiert,” in Stefan Weinfurter, ed., Die Salier und das Reich III: Gesellschaftlicher und ideengeschichtlicher Wandel im Reich der Salier (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1991), 347–414; and Hatto Kallfelz, ed. and trans., Lebensbeschreibungen einiger Bischofe des 10.–12. Jahrhunderts (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973), where not all of the subjects were considered saints.

  14. C. Stephen Jaeger, “The Courtier Bishop in Vitae from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century,” Speculum 58, 2 (1983): 291–325, at 294.

  15. Walther von der Vogelweide, “Kaiser Friedrichs-Ton 4: Engelbrechtspreis,” in Werke, Band I: Spruchlyrik, ed. Günther Schweikle (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1994), 210–11.

  16. The terms of the conflict and the various negotiations intended to solve the matter are described in VE II: 1, 249–52.

  17. Wolfgang Kleist, “Der Tod des Erzbischofs Engelbert von Köln: Eine kritische Studie,” Zeitschrift für vaterländische Geschichte und Altertumskunde 75 (1917). 182–249. This interpretation has been accepted by Karl Langosch; see his introduction to the German translation of the Vita (1955), 20–21.

  18. See Appendix for a complete translation of Caesarius’s Book II, Chapter 7, which relies in part on the account of Frederick of Isenberg’s notary Tobias and from which all citations given here are taken. The excerpt is from Hilka, Die Wundergeschichten (see note 1), 259–66.

  19. Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Gedichte, ed. Siegfried Sudhof (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1974), 45–50.

  20. Karl Morrison, History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), 206. According to Morrison, the sense of “being there” would lead to heightened empathetic participation in the events described, allowing the reader imaginatively to reenact those events and thus bring portions of sacred history into his or her own life.

  21. See VE II: 8, 264.

  22. On the treatment of the corpse on its return to Cologne, VE II: 9, 266–67; on the widespread practice of the division of dead bodies and the theoretical problems it entailed, see Elizabeth A. R. Brown, “Death and the Human Body in the Later Middle Ages: The Legislation of Boniface VIII on the Division of the Corpse,” Viator 12 (1981): 221–70.

  23. The events leading up to the assassins’ executions are described in VE II: 13, 270–72; Frederick’s brutal punishment is described in detail in VE II: 17, 278–81. For further discussion of this, see below.

  24. There is some disagreement as to Caesarius’s position regarding the events. Michael Goodich cites Caesarius’s “grudging tone” in the preface in order to argue that “this [work] was apparently less a labor of love than an obligation”; see his Vita Perfecta: The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (=Monographien zur Geschichte des Mittelalters 25) (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann Verlag, 1982), 63. Karl Langosch, on the other hand, contends that “die Ermordung Engelberts hat C. tief getroffen” on the basis of other evidence such as the sermon and early plans for a Vita, which I will discuss below; see his entry in the DVL, col. 1163.

  25. See Langosch, DVL, col. 1162. The sermon, to be discussed further below, appears in Poncelet, AASS, 639–40.

  26. Aside from the biographical sketches provided by Karl Langosch in the DVL and in the introduction to his German translation of the Engelbert Vita, see the colorful depiction of Caesarius’s life and cultural milieu by Alexander Kaufmann, Caesarius von Heisterbach: Ein Beitrag zur Culturgeschichte des zwölften und dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Verlag J. M. Heberle, 1862).

  27. The letter was published by J. Braun in the Zeitschrift für Philosophie und katholische Theologie 6, 3: 7–11, and translated into German in Kaufmann, Caesarius von Heisterbach (1862), 89–90. The edition of the Dialogue to which I shall refer is Joseph Strange, ed., Dialogus Miraculorum, 2 vols. (Cologne, 1851; rep. Ridgewood, N.J.: Gregg Press, 1966); hereafter DM.

  28. Langosch, DVL, col. 1164, especially in regard to Book II, Chapter 7 (the death scene).

  29. See, for example, the judgments of Karl Langosch in his introduction to the German translation (1955), 19–20, and in the DVL, col. 1163. On the problem of truth and fiction in medieval hagiography, see Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, trans. V. M. Crawford (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961); and on working with and around that disparity, see Lotter, “Methodisches zur Gewinnung,” note 2 above.

  30. See below, pp. 66–67.

  31. On episcopal biography as a genre, see Jaeger, “Courtier Bishop” (1983): 294–95; and Lotter, “Methodisches zur Gewinnung,” 310–12.

  32. See Vauchez, La sainteté en Occident, 303–6.

  33. Ibid., 340–53.

  34. See the edition by Poncelet AASS, 639–40.

  35. Ibid., 640: “Et forte, sicut plures opinantur, Deus voluit delere culpam descensionis eius [Engelbert’s] ab Hierusalem in Iericho. Per Hierusalem, in quo templum erat et religio, negotia designantur spiritualia: per Iericho mundana atque saecularia. Cum episcopus esset et dux, minus illis intendebat et ad ista nimis descendebat, ita ut quidam monachorum nostrorum illi diceret: ‘Domine, vos estis bonus dux, sed non bonus episcopus.’ ”

  36. VE I: 2, 238: “Nam mundane glorie deditus, totus illis multipliciter est irretitus.”

  37. Ibid.: “[Non opera iustitie hec neque salutis divitie, sed] retia demoniorum, instrumenta et laquei peccatorum, quos ipse evadere non potuit.”

  38. Engelbert appears at his memorial mass; VE II: 10, 268–69, Hermann of Lechenich is cured on his deathbed when Engelbert appears to him in a vision, see VE III: 24, 298–99.

  39. The miracles of Engelbert comprise all of Book III of the Vita. They were no longer recorded, however, after the death of Caesarius in around 1240.

  40. See below, pp. 72–73.

  41. VE II: 14, 273: “Nequaquam credere possumus virum superbum, avarum et totum seculo deditum miracula posse facere.” Having just related the story of one skeptic who had dared God to make him go insane and die if the rumors of Engelbert’s miraculous activities were true, Caesarius proclaims that all those who are accustomed to make such cynical statements should consider his exemplum before voicing their doubts further.

  42. VE III: Prologue, 282–83.

  Signa enim non sunt de substantia sanctitatis, sed quedam indicia sanctitatis. Nec fuisset necesse dominum episcopum Engelbert
um miraculis claruisse post mortem, si vite perfectioris fuisset ante mortem. Beatus Evergislus et sanctus Agilolfus Coloniensis episcopi, ambo a nocentibus innocentes occisi, martirio coronati sunt; qui tamen post mortem paucis admodum signis claruerunt, quia non erat necesse, ut post mortem commendarent miracula, quos ante mortem commendarat vita sanctissima.

  Klaus Schreiner has thoroughly explored medieval suspicions that attended both saints who lived good lives but did not perform miracles after death and those who worked wonders without having lived exceptionally well—both types sanctioned in this passage by Caesarius—in his studies “Discrimen veri ac falsi: Ansätze und Formen der Kritik in der Heiligen- und Reliquienverehrung des Mittelalters,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 48 (1965): 1–53 and “Zum Wahrheitsverstàndnis im Heiligen- und Reliquienwesen des Mittelalters,” Saeculum 17 (1966): 131–69. See also Eberhard Demm’s important “Zur Rolle des Wunders in der Heiligkeitskonzeption des Mittelalters,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 57 (1975): 300–344; and Michael Goodich, “Miracles and Disbelief in the Late Middle Ages,” Mediaevistik 1 (1988): 23–38.

  43. Pointed out in an editor’s note, VE III: 282.

  44. See his DM, dist. 10, cap. 1, 2:217. As the works of Klaus Schreiner (see note 42) and Benedicta Ward (see n. 45 below), make clear, miracles presented many problems to theologians trying to explain them, and their explanations tended to be at odds with the practices and beliefs of ordinary people. Many thanks to Caroline Walker Bynum for bringing this point up and for helping me to rethink and complicate my understanding of this rich issue.

  45. See Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 166–91.

  46. Especially Schreiner, “Discrimen veri ac falsi,” see note 42.

  47. Ibid.

  48. VE I: 1, 236: “Sanctitatem, que vite defuit, mors pretiosa supplevit, et si minus perfectus erat in conversatione, sanctus tamen effectus est in passione.”