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Hrabanus Maurus's Commentary on Matthew provides a lens through which to view the centrality of biblical studies to Carolingian reform initiatives. The commentary sits amid a burst of interest in Matthew's Gospel in the first quarter of the ninth century. It also occupies a central place in Hrabanus's program for clerical education and renewal. Hrabanus imagined the work as a user-friendly reference guide or introductory text and structured the commentary with highly sophisticated and complementary indexing, organizing, and searching features to privilege ease of use. Hrabanus's design allows for quick appreciation and simple interpretation of the Gospel's overall narrative structure, its principal episodes, and its individual verses. Moreover, Hrabanus took painstaking effort to document the numerous patristic sources upon which he drew in building the commentary, as well as to acknowledge when he contributed thoughts of his own. The manuscript record, epistolary remarks, sermon texts, and literary references — including in the vernacular — testify to broad dissemination and use of the commentary by Hrabanus's network of patrons, peers, and students across Frankish Europe. Attention to the structure, content, and influence of the commentary expands scholarly appreciation of Hrabanus's genius beyond his achievements as an abbot and bishop or as a prolific biblical exegete, to include resourcefulness and practicality in teaching. Moreover, the study illumines the close association Carolingian leaders saw between biblical studies and broader cultural renewal along with the networks connecting leaders across the Frankish world as they reflected upon and promoted reform.

Hrabanus Maurus's De institutione clericorum is a masterpiece of clerical formation, emblematic of the Carolingian Renewal and esteemed by thinkers throughout the Middle Ages. In the third book, Hrabanus juxtaposes Augustine's teachings in De doctrina christiana with Gregory the Great's instruction in the Regula pastoralis to craft an original case for a close connection between wisdom and moral life in priestly training. Hrabanus's effort concretizes long-standing concerns of Carolingian reformers reiterated in landmark reform documents from the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Moreover, throughout his life, Hrabanus periodically returns to his work on priestly formation for words and ideas to undergird subsequent efforts at integrating education with pastoral practice in a variety of genres, including his model sermons, his encyclopedic commentary, and his handbook for missionary conversion. In addition to highlighting Hrabanus's individual genius as one who adroitly applies traditional authorities in novel ways to contemporary problems, this study illumines the crucial role played by monasteries like Fulda as engines for the Carolingian reform.

De Laudibus Sanctae Crucis (DLSC) by Hrabanus Maurus is a seminal work in the medieval Christian literature that explores the Cross as the central structure of the universe through a unique amalgamation of poetry, prose, and visual art. The work employs a multi-layered narrative that enriches the reader’s understanding, encouraging a meditative interaction with the text that emphasizes the contemplative over the recitative. This paper analyzes Hrabanus’s intricate use of verbal and visual elements to guide his readers into a profound meditation on the universal significance of the Cross.

Carolingian exegetes Hrabanus Maurus and Paschasius Radbertus encountered a paradox in the sources available to them regarding the prophecy of Dan and its representative Samson, the archetypal Nazirite, “Let Dan be a snake in the way, a serpent in the path, that biteth the horse’s heels that his rider may fall backward. I will look for thy salvation, O Lord” (Gen 49:17–8). While in some sources, the blessing given to Dan in Genesis 49:17 is interpreted as foreshadowing Christ, in others it is seen as reflecting the Antichrist. In this article, I explore how these Carolingian exegetes rose to the challenge of this conflict, by the examining the sources for both approaches available to them. I argue that both exegetes engaged with the sources in a manner that bypassed the paradox, each choosing a different way to do so.

This article presents two new indirect witnesses of Beda Venerabilis’ Collectio ex opusculis sancti Augustini in Epistolas Pauli apostoli (CPL 1360). While it was already known that Bede’s Collectio was used as a source for Florus of Lyon’s Expositio in Epistolas beati Pauli ex operibus sancti Augustini, Hrabanus Maurus’ Enarrationes in Epistolas beati Pauli, the Romans commentary in ms. Paris, BNF Lat. 11574, and Sedulius Scottus’ Collectaneum in apostolum, the present study shows that the Collectio also functioned as a source for the anonymous Pauline commentaries in ms. Avranches, Bibl. Mun. 79 (ed. CCCM 151) and for Hrabanus Maurus’ Homiliae in Euangelia et Epistolas. This conclusion allows us to date the Avranches commentaries more precisely, while a systematic comparison of Bede’s florilegium with the latter commentaries provides us with more insight into the anonymous compiler’s knowledge of some of Augustine’s writings and their circulation in Early Medieval Europe. The last part of the article evaluates recent claims that the Collectio was also known to and used by Claudius of Turin, though, in this case, it is concluded that there is currently not enough evidence to prove such claims.

This paper discusses Hrabanus Maurus' presentation of common syllables, which, although largely identical with Bede, has frequently undergone subtle rephrasing at Hrabanus's hands. It will emerge that although Hrabanus did not openly question Bede's views on \"pagan\" and \"Christian\" prosody as such, his presentation of this dichotomy is considerably more moderate than his predecessor's. At the same time it demonstrates how classical authors, largely excised from Bede's treatise, begin to reemerge as useable models for verse composition in the Carolingian age. The main shortcoming of pagan authors is the fact that they are pagan, and, for all their achievements, they are easily surpassed by a competent Christian poet on the merits of his proper ethos. Structure and form as such can neither redeem nor condemn an author.

While it is not possible to identify exact sources for the square tables that Johannes Trithemius and, after him, Blaise de Vigenère presented in their cryptographic publications, there is good evidence that Trithemius may have been influenced by a variety of materials: He knew the figural poetry of Rabanus Maurus (780-856) that frequently used squares with a grid of 36 letters; he was fully aware of the medieval ars combinatoria and the works of the Mallorcan philosopher and theologian Raymundus Lullus (1233-1316), where he would have also found combinatorial circular disks; and he may have discerned a pattern for his square table in the medieval Easter or Lenten tables used for the calculation of the forty days of Lent and the days of Easter over a period of years.

The texts, presented below, belong to several authors who participated in 9th century controversy on predestination. These excerpts illustrate positions of key participants: Gottschalk of Orbais on «double predestination», his critics (Hrabanus Maurus and Hincmar, archbishop of Reims), who claimed that there is only predestination to good and Amolo, archbishop of Lyon, who thought that doctrine of predestination shouldn’t drive people to despair and that is why Scripture and writings of Augustine should be interpreted with this rule in mind.

This chapter examines the intersections between the career of the controversial theologian and missionary Gottschalk of Orbais, condemned for heresy at the Council of Mainz (848) and the Council of Quierzy (849), and the reign of the reforming archbishop Hincmar of Rheims, who sought to contain the danger of Gottschalk’s outlawed teachings. Beginning with a focus on Gottschalk’s teachings on predestination and his subversive methods as a missionary and preacher in Italy and southeastern Europe in the 830s and 840s, the chapter then explores the synods that condemned him, and Gottschalk’s startling resistance to episcopal correction, when he refused to recant despite being severely punished and sentenced to monastic incarceration for the rest of his life. Thereafter, the investigation considers both Gottschalk’s role in the 850s and 860s as a religious outlaw and figure of dissent, encouraging resistance to Hincmar’s reforms and doctrines among young clerics and monks through texts smuggled out of his prison, as well as Hincmar’s repeated efforts to defend Gottschalk’s condemnation as canonical and to prove that his doctrines were heretical.

Diagramming Devotion: Berthold of Nuremberg's Transformation of Hrabanus Maurus's Poems in Praise of the Cross, by Jeffrey F. Hamburger Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. 384 pp.; 220 color ills.; 1 b/w ill. $65