Postdoctoral Fellow 2004-05
Johannes Heil
Technische Universität, Berlin
Concerning Theodulf: The Book, Christians, Jews, Visigoths
and Franks
Of the two basic trends in Carolingian culture, the “insular”
orientation of Charlemagne’s court at Aachen had, as is well
known, a lasting impact on the development of Western culture. In
contrast, the effect of the other stimulus that contributed to the
emergence of this culture seems to have been rather ephemeral: to
the best of our knowledge, the Visigoth Theodulf of Orléans-the
other great scholar at Charlemagne’s court-did not form a
group of disciples, and the distinct Hispanic flavor of the court
in Aquitania withered away some years after Louis the Pious had
become emperor in 814. By 825, all the prominent figures of Spanish
origin had receded. But was the same true for the Spanish intellectual
heritage? This project steps back to the first years of the ninth
century, a decisive point in western intellectual history, and shows
different cultural and religious traditions in competitive yet fruitful
contact. More specifically, the project will examine to what extent
there was a particular ‘spirit’ at work in southern
Gaul in the early ninth century.
To examine this question the project will address two issues. First,
there are traces for ongoing Visigothic influence until the middle
of the ninth century, that is, until the formative process of what
we consider “Carolingian Culture” had fully evolved.
The project will elucidate the techniques and motives that characterized
the theology of Spanish refugees at the turn of the century and
the extent to which they informed later scholars, especially in
the School of Auxerre. The second concern is the rather direct understanding
of hebraica veritas among Iberian scholars: one of the
manuscripts with Theodulf’s revision of the text of the Bible
bears Hebrew marginal glosses (Paris, BNF lat. 11937), and traces
of occasional acquaintance with Hebrew appear also in other manuscripts
of the time. Such evidence provokes the question of the level of
knowledge of Hebrew and access to post-biblical Hebrew sources available
to Theodulf and his contemporaries. Did the experience of exile
bring Spanish Jews and Christians into closer contact and make possible
a less confrontational exegetical enterprise that privileged the
veritas of the Book despite religious divisions? In this
way the project permits a reexamination of issues widely discussed
in the last decades (such as the curious source which the Frankish
scholar Hrabanus Maurus introduced with choice distance as “hebraeus
quidam” for his commentary on Kings) and the extent of Iberian
influence on Carolingian intellectual development in general.
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