Rabanus Maurus

Frankish theologian and scholar

• Born: c. 780
• Birthplace: Mainz (now in Germany)
• Died: February 4, 0856
• Place of death: Winkel, Rhineland (now in Germany)

As one of the leading scholars of the ninth century Carolingian revival of learning, Rabanus introduced generations of medieval students to the wisdom of the Bible and the church fathers and to the practical skills they would need as priests and monks. As abbot of Fulda and later as archbishop of Mainz, he played a leading role in church governance at a time when the leaders of the Church helped to shape society.

Early Life

Very little is known about the early life of Rabanus Maurus (rah-BAHN-uhs MAW-ruhs). He was apparently born to an aristocratic Frankish family. He became a monk at the monastery of Fulda, where he was ordained a deacon in 801. Young monks who showed intellectual promise often were sent to other monasteries for additional reading and study under the tutelage of famous masters. Rabanus was sent to study with Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon scholar who was a close friend and adviser of Charlemagne. Alcuin was one of the leading figures in Charlemagne’s attempt to improve intellectual, cultural, and spiritual life in the Frankish kingdom. As abbot of the monastery of St. Martin in Tours, Alcuin established Tours as an important intellectual center and trained an entire generation of future abbots, bishops, and scholars there. Rabanus was especially close to his mentor. It was Alcuin who gave him the name Maurus, which was the name of the most beloved disciple of Benedict of Nursia, the founder of Benedictine monasticism . Rabanus was Alcuin’s Maurus.

After Alcuin’s death in 804, Rabanus Maurus returned to Fulda. He was ordained a priest in 814 and named master of Fulda’s monastic school in 819. When the abbot died in 822, Rabanus succeeded to that office and added the duties of an administrator of an important monastery to his work as a scholar. In 847, he became archbishop of Mainz.

Life’s Work

Rabanus was born at an important moment in the political and cultural history of Western Europe. Charlemagne had become king of the Franks in 768, and on Christmas Day in the year 800, he was crowned emperor by the pope. Charlemagne’s empire was an ambitious experiment. Charlemagne, who died in 814, and his son, Louis the Pious, who reigned from 814 to his death in 840, tried to maintain political unity in a Europe that had been fragmented ever since the decline of the Roman Empire in the West during the fourth and fifth centuries. Family rivalries and attempts by the military aristocracy to usurp royal power always threatened political stability and unity.

Charlemagne and his successors were not merely fighters and politicians. With the aid of their ecclesiastical advisers, men such as Alcuin, they broadened the role of the ruler to include in it the moral and spiritual regeneration of society. The interest of Frankish leaders in education and culture was part of a practical program to improve society by inculcating Christian practices and principles in the Frankish people.

The bishops and abbots of cathedrals and monasteries throughout Francia were the point men in the effort to reform society. Often the loyalties of church leaders such as Rabanus were compromised. As monks, they pursued lives of contemplation and distance from the world, an ideal difficult to achieve when kings and emperors sought their help and advice. As bishops, they tried to manage the responsibilities of their provinces and to supervise the clergy and people while sometimes called on to choose sides in dynastic disputes by committing the moral and fiscal resources of their bishoprics to one side or the other.

Rabanus’s career started off simply enough at Fulda when he composed a series of poems entitled De laudibus sanctae crucis (in praise of the Holy Cross), which he dedicated to Louis the Pious. The poems were a great success, for they revived the classical practice of joining text to pictures. Rabanus’s “figural poems,” copied over the design of the Cross or over a full-length drawing of the emperor holding the Cross in his hand, delighted both mind and eye. While still a master at Fulda, Rabanus wrote De institutione clericorum (c. 810; on the training of clergy). The book was dedicated to Archbishop Haistulf of Mainz but owed its inspiration to Rabanus’s students, who wanted him to put his lectures into written form. De institutione clericorum is a manual that covers all the topics a priest needed to know in the ninth century before beginning his ecclesiastical duties. Its various chapters range widely over the books of the Bible, vestments, rituals, festivals, ceremonies, church hierarchy, and many other topics.

His next work, De computo (on computation), dates from 820, when Rabanus responded to the plea of a monk named Macharius to explain the very technical subjects of determining dates and numerical reckoning. In the absence of a uniform calendar, it was critical that the clergy be able to determine when feast days were to take place. De computo considered various calendar systems; defined seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years; and even broached astronomical topics, since fixing dates depended on the positions of the celestial bodies.

The last work Rabanus wrote before he became abbot of Fulda was a commentary on the biblical book of Matthew. His interest in explaining the Bible was a natural outgrowth of his function as a teacher. Students of the Bible in the Middle Ages needed commentaries to help them understand the many difficult terms used to describe biblical people, animals, plants, places, money, clothing, and rituals. Readers also had to know something about the historical contexts of the various books. Mostly they had to be helped to understand the mystical and sacred meaning that was believed to lie behind the literal meaning of the biblical text. Rabanus was a skilled expositor not because he was clever and original but because he had mastered much of the work of earlier authors and could synthesize it effectively for his own audience. His success at explaining Matthew led to requests throughout his life to comment on other books of the Bible. Soon he had produced commentaries on almost all the books of both the Old and New Testaments.

When he became abbot of Fulda in 822, Rabanus became deeply involved in managing the estates of the monastery, which apparently had been neglected by his predecessors. Fulda was a rich monastery and controlled properties scattered all over the eastern, Germanic part of the Carolingian Empire. Rabanus’s first literary work of his abbacy indirectly concerned the landed wealth of his monastery. Gottschalk, a monk of Fulda who had been given to the monastery as a child by his father, wished to be released from his monastic vows. Gottschalk argued that the practice of giving children to monasteries, or oblation, was invalid because children could not freely assent to their vows. More was at stake in Gottschalk’s challenge than the life of one monk. Parents often gave grants of land to the monastery in order to help support the abbey that sheltered their children. If Gottschalk succeeded in overturning the practice of oblation, he would thereby threaten not only the sanctity of vows but also the landed wealth of the monasteries. Rabanus’s De oblatione puerorum (on the oblation of boys), written in 829 at the request of Louis the Pious, represented a stout defense of oblation. Gottschalk was defeated at subsequent church councils in his attempt to renounce his vows, and child oblation continued as a practice in the medieval Church until the twelfth century.

Rabanus’s next work, De reverentia filiorum erga patres (834; on the reverence of sons for their fathers), was also inspired by controversy. Louis’s sons had revolted against him when it appeared to them that the emperor was diminishing their power for the benefit of a son born of a second marriage. Rabanus’s essay defended Louis and sought to remind his sons of their obligation of filial piety toward their father. Though Louis was restored to power, the revolt deeply troubled a society that professed Christian values and tried to implement them even in the political arena. Rabanus’s De virtutibus et vitiis (on virtues and vices) is a product of the 830’s and represents the abbot’s attempt to call Carolingian society back to moral principles of behavior.

When Louis died in 840, a brutal struggle for power and for the rights of succession broke out among his sons. Rabanus supported the eldest son, Lothair. The choice was unfortunate, since by 842, Lothair was defeated by his brother, Louis the German. Rabanus, who by this time was sixty years old and in poor health, retired from his abbacy, probably fearing that his advocacy of Lothair would bring harm to his beloved monastery. He removed himself to Petersberg, close by Fulda, and continued his scholarly and pedagogical activities. His monumental De rerum naturis (840’; on the nature of things) belongs to this period. This work was an encyclopedic survey of all the things one had to know in order to interpret Scripture. It was modeled on the Etymologiae (late sixth or early seventh century; partial translation in An Encyclopedist of the Dark Ages, 1912) of Saint Isidore of Seville and owed much to it. Yet Rabanus’s purpose was different because his work, in addition to providing factual information, was concerned with revealing the mystical significance of things.

Rabanus’s retreat from public life was short-lived. When he responded to Louis the German’s request to prepare a biblical commentary, the volume Rabanus produced was a visible sign that the estrangement between monk and king had come to an end. After Archbishop Otgar of Mainz died in 847, Rabanus, undoubtedly with the king’s support, became the new archbishop. Rabanus threw himself with his usual energy into the administrative tasks of his new responsibilities. He presided over a number of important church councils, supported Louis and Louis’s son, Lothair II, and all the while continued to write.

Among the major works from this period is the Martyrologium (martyrology). This book lists the saints whose feast days were celebrated throughout the year and provides brief historical notes about each one. Even as he approached the end of his life, Rabanus was concerned to write books that were useful in the practice of the Christian religion. In this vein, he also prepared two penitentials, books that listed sins and prescribed the appropriate penance for each; a collection of sermons; and De sacris ordinibus, sacramentis divinis, et vestimentis sacerdotalibus (850’; on sacred orders, the divine sacraments, and priestly vestments). His last work was probably the Tractatus de anima (treatise on the soul), to which he appended excerpts from the military manual of the Roman author Vegetius as a useful gift to Lothair.

Significance

Despite a busy and sometimes tumultuous public life, Rabanus Maurus was a prolific scholar whose works helped to transmit the learning of earlier Christian authors to a new audience of Frankish Christians in the ninth century. Rabanus’s learning and skills as an author helped to train the priests and monks who attempted to implement the Carolingian vision of a Christian society.

Rabanus wrote most of his works at the request of students, fellow bishops, abbots, kings, and emperors. Although he often modestly remarked in the prefaces to his works “I did what I could,” his blending of a broad range of earlier authors, some of whom contradicted one another, into a pedagogically effective format was a considerable achievement. Rabanus did not try to be original in fields where traditional truths were more to be authenticated and explained than to be superseded by new insights. Nevertheless, his compilations were, in effect, new works that presented their readers with insights from many texts.

His works were copied many times over in the Middle Ages and continued to be influential even into the age of the printing press, when most of them were published for the first time. Dante placed Rabanus in Paradise with other medieval scholars in his La divina commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802). Many modern writers, perhaps with only minor exaggeration, have dubbed Rabanus Maurus the praeceptor Germaniae, the teacher of Germany.

Bibliography

Duckett, Eleanor Shipley. Carolingian Portraits: A Study in the Ninth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962. Rabanus is not the subject of one of Duckett’s portraits, but she does provide chapters on Lupus of Ferrières and Walafrid Strabo, two Carolingian scholars who studied with the great master. This book succeeds in providing some of the flavor of Carolingian intellectual life.

Eyck, Frank. Religion and Politics in German History: From the Beginnings to the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. An analysis of how Germanic peoples preserved links with classical civilization through their ability to assimilate other cultures and peoples, from their alliances with eighth century popes through the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. The initial bond between the Germanic rulers and popes turned to conflict as the Papacy gained power. Tables, maps, bibliography, index.

Laistner, M. L. W. Thought and Letters in Western Europe, A.D. 500 to 900. 2d ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1957. This work is a good introduction to the Carolingian renaissance and to the world of literature and scholarship in which Rabanus moved. Laistner emphasizes the influence of the classical literary heritage on medieval thought and literature.

Le Berrurier, Diane O. The Pictorial Sources of Mythological and Scientific Illustrations in Hrabanus Maurus’ “De rerum naturis.” New York: Garland, 1978. This reprint of the author’s fine arts thesis examines the sources and significance of imagery in Rabanus’s magnum opus. Illustrations, bibliography.

McCulloh, John. Introduction to Rabani Mauri “Martyrologium.” Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1979. This is the best discussion of Rabanus’s life and work available in English. Although parts of it are directed to the edition of the martyrology that McCulloh edited for this volume, readers will benefit from McCulloh’s discussion of Rabanus’s career and his useful bibliography.

McKitterick, Rosamond. The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians, 751-987. White Plains, N.Y.: Longman, 1983. This is the best general account of Carolingian history available in English. It is particularly good on the Carolingian reform program and on the close links between intellectual life and politics.

Raby, F. J. E. A History of Christian-Latin Poetry. Rev. ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1957. This is a general, handbook discussion of medieval poetry. The section on Rabanus is slight but important.

Stevens, Wesley M. “Compotistica et astronomica in the Fulda School.” In Saints, Scholars, and Heroes: Studies in Medieval Culture in Honor of Charles W. Jones. 2 vols. Collegeville, Minn.: St. John’s University Press, 1979. This is a fine study of the art of computus and also of the Fulda school.

Stevens, Wesley M. Introduction to Rabani Mauri “De computo.” Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1979. This introduction to Stevens’s edition of the Latin text of Rabanus’s De computo contains much valuable information as well as a bibliography.