Intellectual exchange and the reception of classical literature at early medieval Fulda

Abstract

This thesis studies the inheritance of classical literature at the monastery of Fulda in the ninth century. An examination of two writers, Rudolf of Fulda and Brun Candidus, provides a kind of case study of the broader intellectual networks and transmission of classical literature at work in the Carolingian Empire. The study attempts to situate Carolingian literary aesthetics within the context of Late Antique poetry and material culture. It argues that the dominant thread in these writers was the inheriting and refashioning of past classical sources. Through slight emendations made to the classical sources, Rudolf and Candidus are able to incorporate and synthesize pagan writers into the Christian culture of the ninth century. The thesis uses the transmission history of Vitruvius’ De architectura as a case study of the broader intellectual networks. Further, it uncovers a previously unknown Carolingian reader of Vitruvius, Rudolf, and argues for the onetime existence of a manuscript copy of Vitruvius at the Fulda monastery.

Additionally, the thesis contains the first English translations of Rudolf’s Miracula sanctorum in Fuldenses ecclesias translatorum, and Brun Candidus’ opus geminatum or ‘twinned-work’, the prose Vita Eigilis, and the metrical Vita Aeigili. In the study of the metrical Vita the thesis argues that, contrary to being simply derivative or unoriginal, through the use and manipulation of fragments of classical poets such as Vergil and Ovid, Candidus created a narrative subtext to his poem that offered a commentary on the recent crisis at the Fulda monastery, while also offering a vision of ideal and harmonious monastic life. An extensive commentary on the poem adds to this evidence by examining in detail every classical reference in the poem.