Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks: The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim 0812252586, 9780812252583

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Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks

THE MIDDLE AGES SERIES Ruth Mazo Karras, Series Editor Edward Peters, Founding Editor A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim

Martha G. Newman

u n i v e r si t y of pe n ns y lva n i a pr ess ph i l a de l ph i a

C

Copyright 䉷 2020 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 www.upenn.edu/pennpress Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8122-5258-3

To Andy, Daniel, and Matthew and in memory of Janet Gay Newman 1931–2019

contents

Abbreviations

ix

Introduction

1

Chapter 1. Engelhard, Langheim, and the Nuns of Wechterswinkel

18

Chapter 2. Stories and Community: Seeing, Hearing, and Writing

48

Chapter 3. Sign, Sight, and the Sacrament of Faith

71

Chapter 4. Visions of the Eucharist

101

Chapter 5. Imagining Cistercian Holiness

131

Chapter 6. Discerning the Conscience

159

Conclusion

187

Appendix. Engelhard of Langheim’s Book of Exempla: The Manuscripts

199

Notes

211

Bibliography

259

Index

289

Acknowledgments

299

abbreviations

AASS

Acta sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur. Edited by Johannes Bollandus et al. Editio novissima. Paris: Victor Palme´, 1863–. BHL Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis. 2 vols., with supplements. Subsidia Hagiographia 6. Brussels: Socie´te´ de Bollandistes, 1898–1901. Collectaneum Collectaneum exemplorum ac visionum Clarevallense e codice Trecensi 946. Edited by Olivier Legendre. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 208. Turnhout: Brepols, 2005. Collectio Collectio exemplorum Cisterciensis in codice Parisiensi 15912 asseruata. Edited by Jacques Berlioz and Marie-Anne Polo de Beaulieu. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 243. Turnhout: Brepols, 2012. DM Caesarius of Heisterbach. Dialogus miraculorum. Edited by Joseph Strange. 2 vols. Cologne: J. M. Heberle (H. Lempertz & Co.), 1851. Translated by. H. von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland as The Dialogue on Miracles. 2 vols. London: Routledge, 1929. EB Engelhard of Langheim’s exempla book. Poznan´, Biblioteka Raczyn´skich, Rkp. 156, fols. 49r–78r. EM Conrad of Eberbach. Exordium magnum cisterciense sive Narratio de initio cisterciensis ordinis. Edited by Bruno Griesser. Series scriptorum s. ordinis Cisterciensis 2. Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1961. Translated by Benedicta Ward and Paul Savage as The Great Beginning of Cıˆteaux: A Narrative of the Beginning of the Cistercian Order: The Exordium Magnum of Conrad of Eberbach. Edited by E.

x

LM

PL RB

SBO

Statuta

Turbach

VM

Abbreviations

Rozanne Elder. Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2012. Herbert of Clairvaux, archbishop of Torres. Liber visionum et miraculorum Clarevallensium. Edited by Giancarlo Zichi, Graziano Fois, and Stefano Mula. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 277. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Also partially edited as Herbert of Clairvaux, Liber Miraculorum, PL 185: 1274–1384. Citations use the CCCM edition, with the book and chapter from the PL edition in parentheses. Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina. Edited bt J.-P. Migne. 221 vols. Paris: Migne, 1841–64. Benedict. Regula Benedicti. Edited by Timothy Fry as RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in Latin and English with Notes. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1981. Bernard of Clairvaux. Sancti Bernardi Opera. Edited by Jean Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H.-M. Rochais. 8 vols. Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–77. Statuta capitulorum generalium ordinis Cisterciensis, 1116–1786. Edited by Joseph M. Canivez. 8 vols. Louvain: Bureaux de la Revue, 1933–41. Turbach, Frederic C. Index exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1969. Engelhard of Langheim. Vita B. Mathildis Virginis. Edited by Gottfried Henschen. AASS, 7 May: 436–49. Translated by Jonathan Lyon as “The Life of Mechthild of Diessen (d. 1160) by Engelhard of Langheim,” in Noble Society: Five Lives from Twelfth-Century Germany, 170–219. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017. Citations from the AASS edition unless otherwise noted.

All translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. Medieval texts are cited by book and paragraph or chapter number. Biblical citations refer to the Vulgate; translations are based on the Douay-Rheims translations. I retain the Latin spelling from the editions I have used. When working from manuscripts, I distinguish between u and v and have modernized punctuation.

Introduction

In the last years of the twelfth century, a Cistercian monk named Engelhard introduced a collection of stories by reflecting on the daily miracle of the Eucharist. “In the sacraments of the holy altar,” he explained, “we perceive one thing and believe another. What seems to be one thing is something else, appearing as terrestrial bread from earth but existing as celestial bread from heaven.”1 Engelhard’s dichotomies acknowledge the intellectual questions that the Eucharist provokes, but his ideas emerge in a book of monastic stories dedicated to nuns rather than in a scholastic treatise. Many things resembled the Eucharist, Engelhard thought; they looked one way but were actually something else.2 In his stories, he demonstrated that a chalice of sweat was heavenly perfume and a bolt of woolen cloth was purple silk, he suggested that blackened cloaks and charred dishes signified the state of the soul, and he presented visions of dismembered babies as offering hope to their viewers. Even people were not what they seemed. “This man was a woman, but no one knew it,” Engelhard announced as he began his last tale.3 Starting with the challenge of the Eucharist and ending with questions about gender, Engelhard’s story collection taught nuns and monks to imagine the transcendent meaning of everyday objects and behaviors and to link this imagination to their spiritual development. His writings describe a late twelfth-century monastic culture that resisted the clericalization of monastic life and downplayed the sacramental powers of priests, and they articulate a spirituality for Cistercian women who followed the customs of Cistercian men. Engelhard lived in the last half of the twelfth century and the early years of the thirteenth, and he navigated the social and intellectual transformations of his era. Over the span of his life, universities supplanted monasteries as centers of learning, the mass displaced liturgical prayer as the fundamental ritual for Christian society, and urban economies encouraged new interpretations of the apostolic life and religious poverty. A monk from the eastern portion of a European-wide network of Cistercian abbeys, Engelhard was

2

Introduction

raised in Bamberg and lived most of his life in the Franconian monastery of Langheim, far from both the Cistercians’ heartland and an emerging university culture. He was a storyteller whose extant works include a collection of tales, a set of letters in which he embedded still more stories, a saint’s life, and a devotional treatise based on the life of the Virgin Mary.4 His interest in collecting and recording memories of holy predecessors resembled that of other Cistercian authors, but he modified familiar Cistercian stories and offered nuns and non-Cistercians the exemplary lessons traditionally taught in a community of monks.5 Through his efforts to maintain a traditional Cistercian spirituality and teach it to Cistercian women, Engelhard linked considerations of sign, sight, and text to the process of spiritual formation, and he found in monastic work, prayer, and contemplation earthly signs of a transcendent reality. Engelhard articulated a distinctive monastic culture that he thought nuns and monks could share. Just before 1188, he sent a libellus of stories to Erbo, an abbot of the Hirsau-affiliated community of Pru¨fening with whom Engelhard had developed an epistolary friendship.6 A few years later, he expanded this little book and offered it as a gift to the nuns at the Franconian abbey of Wechterswinkel (Figure 1). Although the Cistercian Chapter General did not formally recognize Wechterswinkel as Cistercian until the early thirteenth century, the nuns of this community had instituted some Cistercian customs by the middle of twelfth century, becoming one of the oldest communities of Cistercian women east of the Rhine.7 Engelhard’s collection of stories is the earliest extant text that a Cistercian monk dedicated to Cistercian nuns, and it reveals Engelhard’s assumption that women could share religious practices and a process of monastic formation with Cistercian men.8 Rather than writing to nuns as a priestly advisor who educated women in a particular construction of female religiosity, Engelhard depicted a spiritual equality between nuns and monks, and he thought that Cistercian-affiliated women as well as non-Cistercian monks could find lessons in tales of Cistercian men. His stories assume an audience that was neither fully sacerdotal nor completely lay, neither scholastic nor unlearned, and neither solely male nor only female. Instead of celebrating priestly powers of consecration and confession, Engelhard located sacramental value in objects and behaviors whose efficacy relied more on individual spiritual formation than on sacerdotal authority and action. Engelhard frequently invoked the Biblical exhortation to place one’s light on a lampstand rather hiding it under a bushel.9 Engelhard’s own light,

Incipiunt Miracula Domine et matri M. venerabili 1. De sacramentis altaris 2. De eo qui per visum edoctus est de sacramentis 3. Quod sanguis Christi in propria specie apud nos visus est 4. De eo qui sanctam mariam in altari vidit sedentem 5. De pastore qui eucharistiam iugiter secum ferens fulmine periit 6. De eo qui eucharistiam sepelivit 7. Quod reges monachi et conversi visi sunt in spiritu 8. De eo qui draconem vidit 9. De pontio episcopo et monacho euis 10. De godescalco monacho 11. De puella quam sancta maria vocavit 12. De fratre qui secundum revelationem obiit 13. De iuventibus qui se post mortem ostenderent abbati suo 14. Quod sancta maria cuidam visa est 15. De monacho studioso in choro 16. De monacho iracundo 17. De eo qui se occiderat et revixit 18. De eo quem demones occiderunt 19. Ordinis nostri defensio et fratris mali exitus 20. De eo qui submersus est in cloaca 21. De eo qui vidit omnes ordines ante deum in visione 22. De volmero decano viro bono 23. De bertolfo viro sancto presbytero et monacho 24. Quod apud nos fuerunt et sunt viri sancti 25. De ottone viro sancto 26. De abstinentia 27. De castitate 28. De iusticia 29. De petro episcopo 30. De parvulo qui in igne non arsit 31. De feneratore episcopum consulente 32. De petro clare vallis abbate sancto 33. De duobus nigramanticis 34. De virgine inventi in ordine nostro et defuncta Apollogeticum scriptoris Figure 1. Contents of Engelhard of Langheim’s book of exempla for the nuns of Wechterswinkel.

4

Introduction

however, has long remained hidden, and even those who have examined his texts have not recognized the significance of his interest in religious women.10 This book draws Engelhard and his ideas out from under his basket and uses his compositions to illuminate the spirituality of the women he addressed. Historians have a predilection for studying people at the vanguard of intellectual and cultural developments. With Engelhard, I instead explore a figure who sought to maintain older practices and patterns of thought but whose project of preservation nonetheless developed something new. Engelhard’s compositions give us glimpses of his personality and his concerns, and they provide unusual access into the worldview of a monk who had enough intellectual prominence to leave traces of his ideas and his social interactions but whose writings react to the intellectual and social changes of his era rather than embracing them. Engelhard incorporated into his texts ideas about sign, sacrament, and sight that twelfth-century schoolmen expressed as well, but he articulated an understanding of the presence of the divine in monastic life that differed from the advice and exhortations that priestly authors often directed toward religious women. In offering an alternative to a scholastic culture that distinguished clerical and male spiritualities from those that were lay and female, Engelhard’s texts show how monastic ideas influenced the formation of vernacular religiosities that persisted throughout the later European Middle Ages. My investigation of Engelhard’s writings lies at the intersection of intellectual and social history, and it combines historical methods with the theoretical interventions encouraged by the field of religious studies. Since Engelhard’s compositions have not been fully edited, the medievalist’s tasks of manuscript transcription, translation, and analysis form the foundation for this study. My close reading of Engelhard’s texts identifies the liturgical and Biblical resonances in his language, examines the gendered aspects of his expressions, and compares his stories to those of his Cistercian contemporaries. Furthermore, I locate Engelhard’s sacramental spirituality within his monastic environment, unearthing his networks of friends and patrons, and exploring his reactions to the social and intellectual changes of his period. Through this process of comparison and contextualization, my work considers the place of the sacraments within Cistercian life as well as investigating monastic conceptions of sight and vision, the role of Mary in Cistercian devotion, and aspects of everyday life that are seldom accessible. Finally, I employ theories of reader reception and cognitive blending to analyze how the nuns of Wechterswinkel may have received Engelhard’s text, and I draw

Introduction

5

on insights from anthropology and cognitive science that illuminate how people learn to believe.11 My study engages with conversations within the field of religious studies that trace the genealogy of religion, and it suggests the importance of understanding conceptions of faith in the period before the Reformation.12 By uncovering a religiosity of late twelfth-century nuns and monks that is seldom visible, this book explores the processes of imagination and practice that make conceptions of the unseen and the transcendent seem real. Over the course of the twelfth century, the confluence of logical and theological investigations, the formation of new educational institutions, and the new hierarchical structure of the Church created an increasingly selfaware clerical caste. As these educated clerics invoked their priestly role as mediators of the divine, they reinforced their social position by distinguishing their learned faith from that of the people they sought to discipline, reform, and coerce.13 Such developments hardened social divisions between clerical and lay and articulated a distinction between a theologically inflected religion of the educated clergy and a religion of the laity. This dichotomy between learned and popular persists despite myriad efforts by modern scholars of medieval Christianity to complicate and critique it.14 In analyzing a monastic theology that was neither scholastic nor lay, Jean Leclercq offered one way to break down this dichotomy, and scholars following Leclercq have located a variety of vernacular theologies through which medieval people expressed ideas about God, humanity, and salvation using techniques other than scholastic syllogisms.15 Most of these vernacular theologies emerge in the years after 1200, and many employ visual and literary genres and imagistic forms of expression that blur distinctions between the analytical and the artistic. Some of them articulate scholastic ideas but avoid syllogistic propositions, while others voice ideas that counter, critique, or modify orthodox teachings. Often expressed by women and members of the laity, these vernacular theologies illuminate the ways ideas and beliefs intertwined with the practices of lived religion.16 Exemplary tales such as Engelhard’s have long been an important source for analyzing the dialogue between learned and popular religious cultures and for excavating a “folkloric” religiosity that learned elites tried to eradicate or control.17 His stories are better understood, however, as sharing important characteristics with vernacular theologies. As a monk who briefly held the position of abbot, Engelhard was ordained, but despite his priestly status and his compositions in Latin, he wrote stories rather than treatises, emphasized

6

Introduction

the sacrality of everyday practices, and sought to preserve a monastic religiosity based on liturgical prayer and contemplation rather than priestly consecration. His monastic stories explore in narrative form the topics of faith, sacrament, and the formation of self that his scholastic contemporaries investigated using logical arguments, and his tales brought monks, nuns, and laybrothers into conversation. My study reveals the importance of examining Latin monastic texts for expressions of vernacular theologies, and it argues that Engelhard’s techniques of storytelling constructed a faith for nuns and monks in the years around 1200.

The Cistercians and Twelfth-Century Transformations Engelhard of Langheim wrote at a time in which the social, ethical, and epistemological foundations of his monastic culture were in flux. By the end of the twelfth century, distinctions between monastic and scholastic institutions and patterns of thought had become pronounced. Earlier in the century, scholars from religious communities joined schoolmen in defining and debating the sacraments, in reflecting on the ability of the human mind to comprehend divine mysteries, and in promoting a vision of a reformed Church. Women participated in these intellectual and theological discussions and, together with monks and male scholars, they advocated for Church reform.18 Over the course of the twelfth century, however, the intellectual centers of medieval Europe shifted from monasteries to urban schools that were less tolerant of intellectual cooperation between men and women.19 Increasingly the distinctions between clerical and lay spirituality became gendered, distinguishing the intellectual faith of the male clergy from the affective devotion of religious women.20 Monks and nuns, whose prayers had long been central to a medieval economy of salvation, fit uneasily into these new social divisions. Many monks began to emphasize their role as priests, their performance of private masses, and the importance of the sacraments within monastic life, but nuns could not adopt these sacerdotal roles. Some religious women instead described visions and articulated prophecies that supported and at times critiqued the sacramental powers of a reformed priesthood. Harder to access, however, are forms of religiosity that bypassed priestly mediation and found other means of articulating connections with the divine. Engelhard’s stories provide glimpses of such a perspective.

Introduction

7

As members of the most successful of the new twelfth-century monastic movements, the first generations of Cistercian monks proclaimed their separation from the secular world but also actively promoted ecclesiastical reform and engaged their contemporaries in intellectual debates.21 Despite Bernard of Clairvaux’s expressed hostility toward the new schools and his depiction of Cistercian contemplation as an alternative to dialectical investigations, he and other Cistercians shared with their scholastic contemporaries a concern for reform and an emphasis on self-knowledge as a means of spiritual renewal. Prominent early and midcentury Cistercian authors articulated an imitatio Christi that expressed their own personal repentance, contemplation, and reformation, and they spread this affective spirituality outside of their communities.22 Monastic ideas about spiritual formation influenced scholastic considerations of the sacrament of penance, and people in both monasteries and urban schools were interested in the extent to which words and behaviors signified inner thoughts and intentions. Yet, over time, monastic and scholastic ideas about self-formation diverged. Whereas Cistercian monasteries advocated ways for men and women to know themselves through communal discipline and the example of others, scholastic theologians emphasized a distinction between clerical and lay by teaching priests to elicit hidden thoughts and behaviors from their congregations and to assess the proper penance for sins.23 By the early thirteenth century, Cistercian monks articulated multiple responses to the ambiguous place of monasticism in a society increasingly divided between clerical and lay. Cistercian abbots meeting in Chapter General codified their statutes and regulations to try to maintain uniformity even as the order’s size and geographical diversity produced differences in practice.24 Some Cistercian monks, notably those close to urban environments, offered pastoral care and religious education to the laity and to religious women, including Cistercian nuns.25 Others developed an interest in secular schools and started to adopt a scholastic curriculum; by the 1220s, Cistercian monks began to attend the university at Paris and helped establish the university at Toulouse.26 Still others preached against the Cathars in southern France and participated in the Albigensian Crusade; their fight against heresy influenced the formation of the Dominican order.27 And some preferred to defend their traditions rather than adjust to new circumstances; they celebrated the memory of their saintly predecessors, hardened the order’s regulations prohibiting new houses of Cistercian women, and defended themselves

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Introduction

against accusations that the Cistercians’ increased wealth and privilege demonstrated a loss of their early ideals.28 It was in this environment of consolidation and variation that Engelhard composed his texts. He and other Cistercian authors collected stories about previous generations of Cistercian monks, in part to demonstrate that their order still retained its earlier charisma. Like many of his Cistercian predecessors, Engelhard assumed that a process of spiritual formation through imitating personal examples in an intimate religious community could best inculcate a knowledge of divine things. He also recognized the power of written texts for connecting those who were distant, and he sought to teach by using textual models for imitation.29 He acknowledged the development of sacramental theologies, and he expressed an interest in sight as a form of knowing and as part of new processes of judicial proof, but he explored these topics in stories rather than syllogisms. His writings demonstrate how stories could shape and encourage spiritual growth not just among the monks who shared the physical space in their monasteries but also among nuns and monks who lived at a distance but could still learn from the pedagogical exemplarity of the tales he composed. Engelhard’s expression of a religiosity that encouraged a sacramental imagination in nuns and monks emerged out of his reactions to three major late twelfth-century transformations. First, Engelhard ignored the growing distinction between the priesthood and the laity and instead wrote to nuns and monks as a single social group that was neither sacerdotal nor lay. Although Engelhard sent the nuns of Wechterswinkel a collection of stories that he had previously shared with Abbot Erbo of Pru¨fening, his interest in writing to religious women was not an afterthought. Most of his compositions either depicted women or were dedicated to them. Yet none articulated a distinctively female form of religiosity.30 Instead, they illustrate religious possibilities for Cistercian women by describing a process of spiritual growth that the monks in Engelhard’s stories modeled. That Engelhard addressed monks and nuns as if they had common interests does not mean that he considered gender irrelevant but rather that he gendered the sociological group of nuns and monks to whom he addressed his stories in a way that marked their particular monastic status.31 Second, Engelhard expressed an ambivalence about written communication. He belonged to a monastic order that used the circulation of texts to establish its identity, and he himself wrote and shared stories, prayers, and letters. At the same time, when he addressed the nuns of Wechterswinkel, he

Introduction

9

insisted that he recorded only “what he had seen and heard” and not what he had learned from other written compositions.32 He communicated using texts but he did not acknowledge his stories’ written qualities. In so doing, Engelhard participated in the complex transition from teaching by personal example to teaching through texts. He relied on the character and consensus of his oral informants yet he also explored the mimetic possibilities of written stories for shaping people whom he did not know. The pedagogical practices embedded in his moral tales encouraged his audiences to associate the stories’ protagonists with their recollection of their own personal experiences. Unlike other Cistercian collectors of monastic stories who used tales depicting the miraculous behaviors of holy men to demonstrate a divine presence on earth, Engelhard instead found this presence in everyday behaviors and objects. Through the exemplarity of his narratives, he taught nuns and monks to interpret sacramental signs in their religious life and to imagine what ordinarily could not be seen. Third, Engelhard’s texts reflect changes in the ways people understood vision, knowledge, and faith. The years around 1200 mark a shift in the visual culture of the European Middle Ages.33 A new interest in the relationship of physical vision to knowledge and faith had roots in the eleventh- and early twelfth-century debates over the nature of the Eucharist, especially new ideas about sacrament that emphasized how the physical qualities of the Eucharist could contain and convey an inner reality.34 Some twelfth-century scholars grafted Greco-Arabic medical theories about the physiology of seeing onto a Christian anthropology of the soul and used the amalgam to explore the correlation between sensory vision and spiritual sight.35 Others developed forms of Biblical exegesis that investigated a progression of knowledge from the visible and historical to the invisible and divine.36 By the early thirteenth century, a confluence of developments—ranging from the intellectual assimilation of Aristotelian texts and epistemologies to the emergence of new forms of religiosity and art—demonstrates a widespread interest in the ways that sensory knowledge could provide knowledge of the divine. Engelhard’s writings show an interest in sight but also articulate its limitations. Unlike some of his Cistercian contemporaries who remained suspicious of vision and insisted that “faith is the conviction of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1), Engelhard described his stories as presenting “visible signs” that would show “through sight to those who are tempted by doubt and those who are watchful and observant, those appearances that are to be believed.”37 He also used his informants’ ostensibly empirical observations to

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Introduction

corroborate his tales. Nonetheless, he maintained an Augustinian link between epistemology and ethics in which the interpretation of signs depended on the spiritual formation of the observer rather than on the physical qualities of the sign itself. Although his “visible signs” included material objects such as bread, cloth, and vases of sweat, their appearance did not unambiguously display their meanings. Instead, they seemed to be one thing but were really something else. In encouraging his audiences to see and interpret these signs, Engelhard taught them to see through a lens of faith. Despite Engelhard’s retention of an Augustinian linkage between knowledge and spiritual formation, he found that the visible signs that signified such formation were difficult to interpret. Like the bread of the Eucharist, a person too could look and act one way but actually be otherwise. The twelfth-century monastic and scholastic theologians who explored the nature of sin and repentance considered this problem of appearance and intention. They debated how to discern the signs of a person’s contrition and discussed the relative importance of confession, contrition, satisfaction, and absolution.38 Late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century scholars taught priests to become skilled doctors who could recognize a soul’s illness and offer remedies. Yet, as Dyan Elliott argues, it was more difficult to discern a person’s thoughts from their appearance than it was to understand a sacrament from its sacramental signs.39 Theologians and lawyers tried to use empirical information to assess matters of guilt, and curial officials assembled testimony from inquests to ascertain sanctity, but visual evidence, while thought necessary, had its limits. Engelhard’s stories depict this problem of discernment. Engelhard recounted tales of monks whose abbots or brothers did not notice their hidden sins, and he described holy monks who did not display noticeable signs of their sanctity. This disjunction between hidden and apparent existed in tension with the Cistercians’ assumption that they could learn to know themselves by learning to know others. Some late twelfth-century Cistercian storytellers responded to this tension by emphasizing the importance of confession to an abbot and the priestly transmission of grace. Engelhard, in comparison, continued to stress the importance of developing self-knowledge through the example of others, but he suggested that nuns and monks could learn through exemplary stories even more than through the interpersonal interactions of an intimate community. In writing to women at a distance from his monastery, he retained the nonsacerdotal character of traditional Cistercian culture but replaced the lessons and discernment of face to face contact with texts.

Introduction

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Teaching Faith Engelhard’s stories taught their audiences to imagine connections between heaven and earth. They modeled ways to find signs of hidden realities in monastic behaviors, and they offered interpretations of these earthly signs that demonstrated their transcendent meanings. In teaching this work of imagination, Engelhard sought to shape the faith of nuns and monks and embed their spiritual formation in the practices of monastic life. In his terms, he taught faith (fides) to those who had religion (religio). As he remarked at the end of one of his stories, “the net of Gospel, set in the sea, draws every kind of fish towards faith, for each religio brings in its catch and drags it towards a way of life.”40 Engelhard used the term religio as many of his contemporaries did, to mean monastic observances. In referring only to monastic life, Engelhard’s religio was a narrower term than order (ordo), a word that he applied to secular professions as well as monastic ones. In fact, he even contrasted those with religio to those holding “clerical observances [observantia].”41 He also recognized that there were multiple religiones, since other monastic congregations as well as his own offered a way of life that drew their adherents toward faith. For Engelhard as for other monks, a religio was a complete way of life that shaped the disposition and conscience of those who entered it. It encompassed dress, food, work, prayer, contemplation, reading, and the daily routine of one’s life—all the observances that monastic instituta and consuetudines determined.42 People entered religio but they moved toward faith. Although Engelhard never explicitly defined fides, he invoked it to describe the process by which people learned to link the visible to the transcendent. As we will see, he compared the partial vision of the Christian faithful (fideles) to the blindness of Jewish infideles, and he thought Cistercian communities contained “those seeking what signs signify: the fullness of faith and a holiness of life.”43 For Engelhard, faith was neither solely a cognitive assent to Christian doctrine nor only an emotional response to a divine gift but rather the interpretative process that made the transcendent meaning of visible signs seem real. As John Van Engen reminds us, medieval Christian definitions of faith combined sociological, ethical, and cognitive components. Fides rather than religio provided the capacious term that described the bonds that united Christian society. The twelfth- and thirteenth-century theologians who analyzed and systematized their inherited terms and practices began to consider

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Introduction

in what ways all baptized people, of all ages, occupations, and levels of education, had “faith.” Baptism imparted an “infused” faith to an infant, but this infused faith then had to be formed.44 Pastoral education taught lay Christians this process of formation through the discipline of penance, the sacrament of the Eucharist, the practice of good works, and the knowledge of Christian doctrine. For those in a monastic religio, however, the formation of faith intertwined with the totality of their life and practices. In following the customs of Cistercian men, Cistercian nuns such as the women of Wechterswinkel adopted the Cistercian religio. Engelhard’s stories demonstrate how the practices of this Cistercian religio developed faith. His use of religio and fides remind us how important it is to understand medieval definitions of these terms and not to confuse them with our modern conceptions. Historians, for instance, often assume that “religion” is a self-evident concept; they then either bracket faith as a private mode of thought and feeling outside the scope of their scholarly analysis or use faith and religion interchangeably.45 Scholars in religious studies, in comparison, are cognizant of the ways in which Christian, especially Protestant, assumptions have shaped modern definitions of religion, and they explore the genealogy of the term “religion” to show its imbrication with colonial and imperial enterprises and its use in defining domains that are distinct from the secular, the scientific, and the modern.46 However, even if they recognize medieval uses of religio, they usually start their genealogies in the sixteenth century. Furthermore, in emphasizing material religions, religions in practice, and religions as discourses of power, they tend to ignore the genealogy of faith.47 An understanding of medieval Christian conceptions of religio and fides complicates their analyses, and it suggests ways that faith too can be intertwined with bodily practice and material objects. In analyzing Engelhard’s tales, I draw on the work of scholars who recognize medieval belief as a form of learned behavior. John Van Engen demonstrates that the medieval theologians who began to make systematic analyses of theological doctrine and to organize themselves into a guild of scholars also investigated the psychological and sociological implications of their definitions of faith.48 Jean-Claude Schmitt, following the insights of Michel de Certeau, suggests that a static notion of “belief” should be replaced by an emphasis on believing as a social act. Believing in ghosts, he argues, entails talking about them, creating images of them, and seeking to persuade others of their existence.49 And in a series of recent articles, Steven Justice analyzes miracle stories and exempla to critique reductive definitions of religion and

Introduction

13

the idea that medieval people either were naively credulous or were manipulative actors who used religious language to disguise their desire for power and authority.50 Justice argues that faith, belief, and doubt were topics that medieval thinkers themselves discussed, analyzed, and encouraged, and he suggests that scholars should seek to understand the mechanisms by which medieval faith was produced.51 To examine these mechanisms, I incorporate the insights of recent anthropological studies that explore how people learn to believe. Ethnographic investigations of dreams, of shamanism, and of the felt presence of the divine have uncovered the practices and disciplines that make religious experiences possible, and they identify the local theories of mind that provide frameworks for feeling, perceiving, and responding to experiences so that they seem autonomous.52 These studies combine anthropological premises about the importance of culturally situated behaviors, ideas, and concepts with insights about ingrained patterns of thought that originate in cognitive linguistics and psychology. This juxtaposition bridges the gap between the cognitive and the social, suggesting that learning religion takes place not just in the mind but in interactions between thought and behavior in specific cultural and social environments.53 As a result, believing encompasses a set of practices that require work to acquire, sustain, and communicate; it is this work that we can study. Furthermore, belief is not just a cognitive proposition or a conscious articulation of doctrine but also is a form of imagination that supports inferences and develops through training, through social processes of recollection, and through particular individual proclivities.54 By analyzing semiotic and semantic systems and culturally specific theories of mind, as well as by examining discipline and ritual behaviors, we can explore the formation of mental habits such as those Engelhard associated with faith.55 My study of Engelhard replaces the ethnographic methods of these anthropologists with an analysis of narrative and exemplarity that acknowledges the textual and historical nature of my sources but still recognizes the process of learning to believe. Engelhard taught with illustrative stories that modern scholars often label “exempla.” Recent studies of exemplary narratives demonstrate that they are not merely amusing stories with simplistic morals but instead are texts whose specificity and detail encourage their audiences to assess themselves in reference to the behaviors in the stories.56 In fact, like conversations about visions and dreams that anthropologists record, exemplary stories create interpretive communities by encouraging their audiences to intermingle the stories’ narratives with their own experiences.

14

Introduction

Theories of cognitive poetics and audience response further illuminate how stories shape their audiences. Peter Stockwell calls the assumptions shared by authors and their readers the “preferred response” to a text, while cognitive poetics assumes an interaction between a text’s inner logic, the experiential perspectives that readers bring as they read, and the patterns of cognitive blending that make up human thought.57 I use these theories to identify the elements within Engelhard’s texts that created preferred responses from their readers and to investigate the ways they interacted and resonated with the mental and physical habits created by the Cistercians’ liturgy and discipline. Engelhard’s stories taught their audiences to imagine themselves and others through a process of blending narrative with practice that made the transcendent seem real.58 In exploring imagination, I investigate the domain that lies between “making believe” and “make-believe.” The French term faire croire, loosely translated as “making believe,” encompasses coercive and violent forms of religious instruction but also rhetorical and artistic expressions of power by which people seek to persuade others of the reality of their symbolic systems. The phrase, however, still assumes a two-tiered model of religiosity in which clerical elites sought to teach the laity what to believe.59 Engelhard wrote at a time when a fear of hidden heresy and wrong belief made a clerical project of persuasion especially salient, but his texts do not fit neatly into this dichotomy between elite and popular. Instead of writing with the literate authority of a male priest who sought to educate a community of religious women, Engelhard adopted a simple rhetoric and a humble voice with which he modeled reactions to his tales, even appearing at times as a character in his narratives. His stories show how to believe rather than making believe, and they assume that Engelhard joined with his audiences in this effort. Although we do not know how the nuns who received Engelhard’s story collection responded to his ideas, his stories nonetheless illuminate the ways stories could shape their audiences, and they articulated a particular monastic understanding of concepts of sacrament, sign, and faith. If making believe lies on one side of my study, make-believe lies on the other. In arguing that Engelhard taught his audiences to imagine connections between heaven and earth, I do not mean to imply that these connections were a form of fantasy.60 Instead, I draw on medieval conceptions of imagination as the ability of the mind to form images and concepts, whether from sensed objects or from a memory of other images.61 In fact, for the monastic theologians who influenced Engelhard, the imagination was a faculty that

Introduction

15

connected body and soul, linking information from the senses with an invisible reality that the soul sought to understand.62 Engelhard’s texts teach by modeling this work of imagination and interpretation for audiences of monks and nuns interested in Cistercian practices. He offered his stories as visible signs of invisible things, and he explored the ways sacramental objects and behaviors made connections between heaven and earth seem real. The stories themselves link the everyday to the transcendent, but even more important, they encourage their audiences to associate the metaphors within the text with their own experiences and to connect the tales with the ritual practices and culture of Cistercian monasteries. In teaching how to imagine what could not be seen, Engelhard worked within a monastic tradition of contemplative reading as well as with an Augustinian semiotics that stressed the importance of inner virtue and spiritual growth for the process of interpreting signs. As he and his audiences recollected and reexamined their own experiences in light of the experiences of the stories’ protagonists, they learned to consider their imagined connections between heaven and earth as sacramental and thus to develop in faith.

Chapter Outline Engelhard’s interest in understanding what could not be seen and his desire to make the hidden manifest are central themes in his writings. His texts pose questions about experience, imagination, and the link between heaven and earth; about absence, presence, and communication across distances; and about behavior, thought, and the composition of the self.63 These questions emerged from the daily concerns of his monastic life, and they became interwoven with one another and with the Cistercian exempla he offered to the nuns of Wechterswinkel. The chapters of this book tease apart these issues and investigate their reception by placing Engelhard in his social and intellectual context. They demonstrate Engelhard’s reactions to the transformations around him and show how he encouraged nuns and monks to imagine their holiness and the holiness of their monastic life. The first three chapters of this book set Engelhard’s ideas and writings in the context of the cultural and social changes of his time. In Chapter 1, I explore the fragmentary information about Engelhard’s life, his monastery, and the abbey of Wechterswinkel, and I examine his relationships with the patrons who commissioned his works and established convents of Cistercian

16

Introduction

nuns. I connect his social networks with his recognition that women could successfully follow male customs, and I argue that his inability to find gendered imagery that easily distinguished men from women helps to define the particular sociological category of nuns and monks whom he addressed. In Chapters 2 and 3, I examine Engelhard’s texts in the context of the intellectual transformations of the late twelfth century. In Chapter 2, I explore Engelhard’s role as a storyteller and his use of persuasive rhetoric. I compare his stories to those in other Cistercian collections, and I argue that Engelhard’s emphasis on the oral qualities of his written tales was a rhetorical technique that encouraged his audiences to imagine people they could not see or hear. Chapter 3 examines questions of sight, vision, and imagination. I analyze Engelhard’s accounts of visions in relation to a new emphasis on sight and new definitions of sacrament, showing how his ideas echoed those developed by twelfth-century theologians, especially Hugh of St. Victor. I argue that Engelhard’s stories maintained an epistemological position inherited from Augustine but that they drew on twelfth-century ideas about sacrament and sight to articulate the importance of a sacramental imagination for monks and nuns alike. The second half of the book demonstrates how Engelhard’s compositions reveal the religiosity of the nuns and monks who encountered his works. Here I employ the ideas drawn from cognitive poetics and theories of reader response to investigate the religious culture of Engelhard’s audiences, especially the nuns of Wechterswinkel. In Chapter 4, I place Engelhard’s stories of eucharistic visions within the context of a Cistercian culture that articulated multiple meanings of eucharistic symbols but also posited the transformation of the bread and wine in the mass as only one of many ways of forging a contact with the divine. I demonstrate that Engelhard downplayed the importance of priests and their transformation of the eucharistic elements and instead highlighted the personal sacrifice of the sacrament’s recipients and the spiritual condition and communal culture needed to see and interpret visions properly. In Chapter 5, I extend this analysis to show how ordinary objects and behaviors could take on sacramental qualities through their interactions with liturgical language and practice. I explore Engelhard’s insistence on the mixed quality of life on earth and the particular ways he employed both sacramental objects and Marian apparitions to help nuns and monks imagine the holiness of Cistercian monasticism. Chapter 6 connects changing ideas of the sacrament of penance with Engelhard’s emphasis on the disjunction between visible signs and their

Introduction

17

hidden meanings. I argue that this disjunction undercut both a pastoral concern for discerning the conscience of others and Engelhard’s desire to maintain the intimate and formative qualities of a Cistercian community. Rather than describing the importance of the sacrament of penance and reconciliation, as did some of his monastic contemporaries, Engelhard substituted texts for an abbot’s discretion and for the lessons offered by a community. By teaching divine justice and mercy through the composition of stories in which the audiences recognized what the protagonists did not notice, Engelhard extended his lessons about Cistercian culture to nuns and monks who were physically separated from his community. In the conclusion, I return to the sociological status of Engelhard’s audience and the lessons he provided. I draw together the gendered language that runs throughout Engelhard’s stories to show how his depictions of Mary as an abbot and of monks as mothers reflecte the immanent qualities of his sacramental imagination and the importance of nurturing a good conscience within oneself, even if such a conscience was not readily visible to others.64 I return as well to the kinship between Engelhard’s texts and later vernacular theologies. Engelhard articulated a sacramental but nonsacerdotal religiosity during a time of epistemological transformation, and his ideas express a position that seemed conservative by the year 1200. Nonetheless, the use of narrative exemplarity to teach sacramental connections between heaven and earth reemerged in the later Middle Ages among those seeking nonsacerdotal ways of locating the divine presence in the everyday.65 In illuminating how narratives teach their audiences to imagine themselves and others, Engelhard’s stories uncover a process of religious formation that he thought nuns and monks could share, and they demonstrate how the practices of his particular medieval religio could shape the faith of the nuns of Wechterswinkel.

chapter 1

Engelhard, Langheim, and the Nuns of Wechterswinkel

On the last folio of a text in a thirteenth-century codex from the Raczyn´ski Library in Poznan´, Poland, an acrostic poem spells out the Latin name ENGELHARDUSS (Figure 2). The poem, which sings the praises of the Virgin Mary, also appears some twenty-five folios earlier as the coda to a story in which Mary rescues a servant from brigands.1 No “Engelhardus” appears in the tale, nor does this name occur elsewhere in the manuscript. Even the authors and recipients of the letters copied into this codex are designated only by their initials.2 Another manuscript, however, spells out the full names of the correspondents, allowing modern scholars to attribute these compositions to Engelhard of Langheim.3 Whether the acrostic was Engelhard’s own poetic puzzle or that of a later scribe is not possible to determine, but the manuscript’s reticence about the author of its texts reflects Engelhard’s literary modesty and the difficulties in excavating his life from the traces left in his writings. Engelhard’s writings do not purport to be autobiographical. Engelhard wrote in a distinctive voice that occasionally ventures into the first person, and his stories and letters offer glimpses of his personality and concerns, providing unusual access to the worldview of a monk intellectually and physically distant from the center of the Cistercian order (Figure 3).4 No other sources mention him, perhaps because multiple late medieval and early modern fires left few extant documents from Langheim’s libraries. The fragmentary information Engelhard did leave illuminates how his regional connections and networks influenced his interpretation of a

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Figure 2. Engelhard’s name in an acrostic poem. Poznan´, Biblioteka Raczyn´skich, Rkp. 156, fol. 120r.

traditional Cistercian culture and his distinctive expression of monastic spirituality. Engelhard lived most of his life as a Cistercian monk. The daily routine of his monastery formed his character and shaped his ideas. Monastic regulations molded everything from his gestures and bearing to his clothes, his food, and his patterns of sleep, and the liturgical setting for his actions gave them a transcendent significance that influenced patterns of thought as well as behavior. Yet Engelhard also established important connections outside his monastery. Not only did he collect stories from the agricultural workers around his abbey, but he also developed friendships with monks from nonCistercian communities, with religious women, and with a powerful family that, by the late twelfth century, controlled both ecclesiastical and secular centers of power in the region. Through these networks, Engelhard encountered other monks who also collected narrative tales and who also explored the spiritual equality of religious men and women.5 His interactions with his

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Chapter 1

Figure 3. Engelhard of Langheim’s monastic connections.

patrons and friends influenced his assumptions that nuns and monks formed a single sociological category described by similarly gendered characteristics, and they convinced him that women could successfully follow the customs and practices of a male Cistercian monastery. Out of his efforts to maintain the traditions of his monastic community, he articulated something new.

Engelhard of Langheim The dates of Engelhard’s birth and death are unknown.6 His correspondence with better-documented figures supply a few dates, his comments offer hints to his activities and outlook, and the manuscripts containing his compositions suggest his networks and his influence. These fragments depict a man who was curious about the world around him, who had administrative responsibilities in a well-to-do and locally prominent abbey, and whose interactions with other

Engelhard, Langheim, and the Nuns

21

monks and nuns enhanced his skill in collecting and recounting stories. While lacking specific biographical details, Engelhard’s texts provide insights into the world of a late twelfth-century Franconian monk and the formation of his ideas. Engelhard was born in Bamberg and spent most of his life about thirtyfive kilometers to the northeast, in the Cistercian monastery of Langheim. In the narration that connects his stories, Engelhard remarked that his father’s death left him an orphan and that he was raised by Volmar, a deacon in Bamberg.7 A Volmar appears in charters that bishops of Bamberg issued between 1145 and 1165; he is at times listed as “deacanus” and at times as “sacerdos.”8 If this was Engelhard’s foster parent, then it is likely Engelhard was born sometime in the 1140s or 1150s. Engelhard praised Volmar for his kindness, simplicity, and virtue and for nurturing other orphans as well. At least one of these foster brothers also became a Cistercian monk.9 Engelhard considered himself unlearned and described his education as “rustic.”10 This was more a humility trope than a statement of fact. Engelhard was clearly literate. Nonetheless, his education was not that of his scholastic contemporaries. In the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, the cathedral school in Bamberg had been an important site for educating imperial officials, and in the twelfth century, it continued to stress the importance of grammar, rhetoric, and the formation of morals even as these subjects began to seem outdated.11 Engelhard appears to have absorbed only parts of this traditional educational program. His prose is not that of a Latinist with an ear tuned to classical rhetoric, and his works contain few classical references. Nonetheless, he recognized the importance of learning virtue by modeling one’s behavior on that of one’s teacher, describing his foster brother, Bertolf, as learning from Volmar by “copying in himself the image of his nurturer.”12 At his best, Engelhard wrote with the direct and vivid language of a storyteller, weaving Biblical language and imagery into his stories and reproducing in texts the qualities of a face to face teaching that imprinted morals as well as knowledge. When he tried to impress his reader, as in some of his letters, his prose loses its vividness. Engelhard’s sense of himself as unlearned may have stemmed from his recognition that the intellectual center of late twelfth-century Europe had shifted toward the Parisian basin and northern Italy and that training in logic, theology, and law had become important for ecclesiastical advancement. Engelhard did not attack the urban schools with the polemical language that some of his Cistercian contemporaries employed, but he

22

Chapter 1

nonetheless viewed these educational developments with suspicion. He contrasted himself to scholastici, he sniped at scholars who were “too busy with their laws and decretals” to write a saint’s life, and he emphasized that one could learn more from experience than from books.13 Even his description of Volmar stressed virtue over book learning. Engelhard claimed that a metricus from the school at Bamberg had said of Volmar, “from his boyhood, he was not so much a poet as a prophet.”14 When Volmar went to Paris, Engelhard thought Volmar’s holy simplicity more noteworthy than his scholastic education. As Engelhard explained, Volmar “never deigned to know what a pound was.” When he sold his horse after arriving in Paris, he refused to accept two pounds of silver, insisting instead that the buyer place “thirty pennies in this hand, and the same amount into the other.”15 The scholars admired Volmar’s purity rather than mocking his lack of sophistication, and Engelhard thought they found in him the innocence of a dove rather than the shrewdness of a serpent (Matthew 10:16). A Parisian focus on arts and dialectic had attracted this Bamberg deacon to Paris’s schools sometime in the middle of the twelfth century, but Engelhard’s story presents Volmar as retaining Bamberg’s traditional focus on moral education. Engelhard did not follow Volmar to Paris for even a brief taste of scholastic life. Instead, while probably still in his teens, he made the conscious decision to become a monk at Langheim. Other than a brief tenure as an abbot in Austria, Engelhard remained at Langheim until his death. His first years as a monk were difficult. He described a period in his adolescence when, “conquered by tedium, unable to endure the temptation, and considering nothing other than to leave,” he hardened his heart and refused to listen to the older monks who offered him help. Eventually, the prior Otto knocked down his defensive wall and “by bringing aid to one considering flight, he roused me when I waivered, corrected me when I vacillated, and sent me back to fight again, stronger and better because of his word.”16 Although Engelhard later became an abbot and must have been a priest, he never mentioned his ordination or his performance of sacraments. He was more focused on his position as a monastic official, “caring for the business of the house.”17 As either cellarer or prior, he witnessed events that he later recounted in his stories. He was summoned when the wife of a shepherd brought a stolen eucharistic wafer to Langheim, and he was present in an unnamed monastery when the brothers found a monk naked and dead in the cellar.18 Engelhard is unusual among Cistercian authors in describing the agrarian society that surrounded his community. Two of his tales involve female

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23

weavers, one includes a shepherd, and one concerns a servant from the monastery of Ebrach. Another story originated with the local miller. Engelhard also recounted a tale he heard in the vernacular and translated into Latin.19 He noted the presence of hired workers, and he included Cistercian laybrothers as protagonists in his stories, depicting their spiritual equality with the monks.20 His interest in a nonsacerdotal religiosity extended to laybrothers as well as to Cistercian nuns. Many of Engelhard’s stories stemmed from a Cistercian network of abbeys. Engelhard set a third of his tales at Langheim, but others depended on Langheim’s affiliation with the Cistercian order.21 When Langheim was established, around 1132, its first monks came from Ebrach, a Cistercian community positioned halfway between Wu¨rzburg and Bamberg. Monks from the Burgundian abbey of Morimond had founded Ebrach some five years earlier. Adam, Langheim’s first abbot (c. 1141–1180), probably first professed at Morimond, moved to Ebrach, and then transfered to Langheim. The abbot of Ebrach conducted yearly visits to the abbeys that Ebrach founded, the abbot of Morimond also visited the abbeys in his filiation, and the Franconian abbots traveled yearly to the meeting of the order’s Chapter General at Cıˆteaux. Engelhard relied on these connections for many of his stories. In one of his letters to Erbo of Pru¨fening, Engelhard recorded a tale he had heard at the Cistercian Chapter General, suggesting he attended the meeting at least once before 1188. At Cıˆteaux, he probably encountered other Cistercian monks interested in collecting stories.22 He also relied on the movement of monks between monasteries and the travels of abbots on the order’s business. The abbot of Morimond provided one of Engelhard’s tales while a monk named Bezelin brought Engelhard four stories from Cistercian houses in France. Other tales, however, came from non-Cistercian connections. A Chuno, who left Langheim for the Hirsau-affiliated abbey of Schaffhausen, returned after experiencing the horrific death of one of the Schaffhausen monks, and he recounted the tale to his Langheim brethren.23 In the 1180s, Engelhard developed an epistolary friendship with Erbo, who served as abbot of the Regensburg monastery of Pru¨fening between 1168 and 1187. The two men appear to have exchanged letters before they met in person, but we do not know what initiated their contact.24 Bishop Otto I of Bamberg had helped establish both Pru¨fening (c. 1119) and Langheim (c. 1132), but Pru¨fening followed the customs of Hirsau while Langheim was Cistercian. A former Regensburg schoolmaster, Idung, had left Pru¨fening for an unnamed Cistercian house around 1153 and composed an apologetic

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Chapter 1

treatise praising the Cistercians. It is possible that his departure triggered an interest at Pru¨fening in Cistercian customs and practices.25 But it is more likely that Erbo, like Engelhard, wished to teach his community using stories and that their friendship centered on Engelhard’s supply of didactic tales. The six letters that Erbo and Engelhard exchanged contain elaborate expressions of humility that frame Engelhard’s stories and Erbo’s requests for still more tales. Some concrete information emerges alongside these rhetorical flourishes. In his first letter, Engelhard asked Erbo to return his libellus because Engelhard’s abbot thought that Engelhard had shared Cistercian stories with Erbo without permission. Erbo sent back the book but also gave Engelhard more parchment so he could continue to write.26 This libellus was probably an early version of the story collection that Engelhard dedicated to the nuns of Wechterswinkel sometime after 1188. Embedded in Engelhard’s letters are five more tales. None of these five stories appear in the composition for the nuns, although in some manuscripts, two appear among the stories later appended to Engelhard’s collection.27 Instead, Engelhard added new stories and a writer’s apology to the libellus, and he sent it with a letter of dedication to the abbess and nuns of Wechterswinkel in return for an unspecified favor. Engelhard’s tenure as abbot remains a mystery. In his correspondence with abbot Herman of Ebrach, written sometime between 1190 and 1207, Engelhard remarked that he had once “been called abbot” of a monastery in Austria.28 A likely candidate for this Austrian monastery is the abbey of Heiligenkreuz.29 There is a lacuna in the list of named abbots for Heiligenkreuz between 1203 and 1207, and the records of the Cistercian Chapter General note that in 1206, “the abbot who was made abbot in Austria contrary to the form and rules of the order will be deposed immediately.”30 If this improperly ordained abbot was Engelhard, then Engelhard’s comment that he was merely “called abbot” is not only a humility trope but a statement of fact. This deposition would have brought Engelhard back into contact with the Cistercian Chapter General that by the late twelfth century had started to enforce its regulations and make its decisions disciplinary rather than exhortative.31 Surprisingly, the Chapter General had approved a number of actions by this unnamed abbot of Heiligenkreuz before it deposed him. In 1203, the abbot served as a messenger from the Chapter General to report a penalty imposed on the abbot of the monastery of Walderbach, in Regensburg, for not attending the abbots’ meeting. In 1205, the abbots of Heiligenkreuz and Egres inspected a possible site for a new abbey, probably the abbey

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25

of Caˆrta, sponsored by the king of Hungary, Andreas II.32 These activities intersect with Engelhard’s regional connections. But even if Engelhard was abbot at a different Austrian monastery, over the course of his life he still would have observed the gradual legal and organizational institutionalization of the Cistercian order. An early thirteenth-century codex from the Cistercian Austrian abbey of Zwettl suggests Engelhard’s links to another, less formal, network of monasteries. Zwettl 13 is the only manuscript that records all six letters that Engelhard and Erbo exchanged, and it is the only one that identifies Engelhard by name rather than by initial.33 It contains most of Engelhard’s story collection for Wechterswinkel, but it breaks off in the middle of the last tale, before the writer’s apology. We can only speculate as to how Engelhard’s compositions came to be copied at Zwettl. Zwettl was a daughter house of Heiligenkreuz, so if Engelhard served as the abbot of Heiligenkreuz, the monks from Zwettl may have copied a now-lost dossier of Engelhard’s writings into the last folios of this codex.34 The majority of Zwettl 13 contains an early copy of the first three months of the Magnum legendarium austriacum (MLA), a multivolume compendium of more than 500 legends of the saints whose earliest extant exemplar remains at Heiligenkreuz.35 Although scholars once thought that the Zwettl recension of the MLA reproduced the Heiligenkreuz exemplar, providing evidence for a specifically Cistercian branch of the legendary, recent work shows that the Heiligenkreuz and Zwettl manuscripts stem from different families and that the Austrian monastery of Admont most likely supervised the MLA’s production.36 Earlier speculation that Engelhard might have been involved in assembling the MLA now seems incorrect.37 Nonetheless, Engelhard’s tenure as abbot in Austria positioned him at the edge of a large monastic project of collecting, organizing, and copying saints’ lives that may have influenced his own interest in collecting stories. Erbo of Pru¨fening visited Admont in 1187, during the period that Erbo and Engelhard corresponded, and Kunigunde, a sibling of Mechthild of Diessen whose vita Engelhard composed, was a sister at Admont; Mechthild’s nephew, Henry, was at Admont as well.38 Furthermore, some material in the Zwettl and Heiligenkreuz manuscripts probably originated in texts that circulated between Pru¨fening and Admont.39 The preservation of Engelhard’s writings in a manuscript of the MLA, located alongside the miracles of the Virgin that fill the last folios of the Zwettl codex, suggests the scribes who copied these texts thought them similar to the other short narratives in the volume.

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Chapter 1

Engelhard continued to collect and write stories at the end of his life, even after he returned from Austria to Langheim. In a letter to abbot Herman of Ebrach, Engelhard remarked that he had started his vita of Mechthild of Diessen in Austria but finished it once he returned to Langheim.40 He included in this letter a story about a leper that he had heard from the abbot of Sticˇna, a Cistercian monastery in what is today Slovenia. Engelhard claimed this tale originated in Pomerania and had come to the abbot’s notice by way of the archbishop of Lund; the chronology associated with these figures does not help pinpoint the date for this letter more precisely.41 Engelhard was still alive at the turn of the thirteenth century, since one of his stories, that of the servant from the Cistercian abbey of Ebrach whom brigands captured and the Virgin Mary miraculously released, took place during the political chaos that began after Emperor Henry VI’s death in 1197 and grew worse after the murder of Philip of Swabia in 1208.42 There is no record of Engelhard’s death.

Langheim and Its Patrons Engelhard lived most of his life in the Cistercian abbey of Langheim. The abbey’s position and patronage networks shaped his outlook and his connections. Langheim lies in a valley to the northeast of Bamberg, just south of the Main River. In the early twelfth century, this was a forested area dotted with small villages; today, these forests have fragmented but the small villages remain.43 The monastery has become the hamlet of Klosterlangheim and is associated with the basketmaking town of Lichtenfels, four miles to its north. The narrow road into Klosterlangheim goes by the remnants of the monastery gatehouse, where a rooftop statue of Bernard of Clairvaux watches over the passing cars, and it wends through the middle of the former abbey. A large medieval grange filled with modern agricultural machinery stands on the west side of the road, and the eighteenth-century building that was the monks’ last dormitory is now divided into apartments. The abbey’s main church has disappeared, demolished after a fire and the monastery’s secularization in 1803, but a small chapel dedicated to St. Michael remains on the northern edge of town. Monks still inhabit the area but only as silhouettes of Langheim’s abbots, painted on wooden boards by the town’s children and placed in the courtyard outside the village museum.

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27

There are modern signs of Langheim’s medieval prominence. The shrine of the Vierzehnheiligen, with a baroque basilica designed by Balthasar Neumann, now overshadows the ruins of Langheim to its east, but it was once administered by the monks of Langheim. The Cistercians created this international pilgrimage site in the fifteenth century following a shepherd’s vision of fourteen holy helpers assisting a crying child in Langheim’s fields.44 St. Michael’s chapel on the north side of Klosterlangheim exhibits the coats of arms of the noble families who supported the abbey. In nearby villages such as Trieb, Hochstadt, and Tambach, granges and hostels from the monastery’s extensive estates still stand. So do the houses that once served as the monastery’s commercial outposts in the towns of Bamberg and Kulmbach.45 By the mid-thirteenth century, Langheim not only held property around the abbey but also possessed estates north of the Main in the Frankenwald, west along the Main toward Wu¨lflingen, and even on lands just to the south of Wu¨rzburg. As well as administering eleven granges, Langheim controlled mills and a salt mine and shared a Bamberg trading house with two other Cistercian abbeys (Figure 4).46 These properties, along with the numerous purchases recorded in its charters, suggest that thirteenth-century Langheim was involved in a commercial and monetized economy and had developed a prominent position that stemmed from its patronage networks and its position within the Cistercian order. Langheim remained prosperous into the fourteenth century. By 1385, however, the ravages of disease and economic dislocation undermined the abbey’s administration, and the bishop of Bamberg took over Langheim’s lands and redirected its revenues to the cathedral chapter. As was the case for many monasteries in Franconia and Bavaria, the late medieval and early modern wars were catastrophic. The Hussites burned parts of Langheim in 1429, the monastery was plundered in 1525 during the German Peasants’ War, and the Swedes burned it again in 1632 during the Thirty Years’ War. In the eighteenth century, the abbey was rebuilt for the last time, only to experience yet another fire in 1802, the year before its secularization.47 The remaining eighteenth-century buildings now constitute the village of Klosterlangheim. When Engelhard entered Langheim, probably in the 1160s or early 1170s, the monastery was on the cusp of rapid growth. Over the course of Engelhard’s life, Langheim transformed from a small local community to one that was embedded in international webs of social and institutional connections. Central to this transformation was the growing influence of the family of the

Figure 4. Langheim and its environs.

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Andechs-Merania. In the early twelfth century, the Andechs family consolidated its lands in upper Bavaria, around Ammersee. From this base, they spread both north and east. By the late twelfth century, this family controlled the ecclesiastical and secular centers of power around Bamberg. By the first decade of the thirteenth century, they had established affiliations that spread north to Silesia, east into Slovenia and Istria, and south into their ancestral lands in Bavaria. A series of prominent marriages enhanced their influence. Between 1186 and 1204 Count Berthold III married one daughter to King Philip II of France, another to King Andreas II of Hungary, and a third to the Duke of Silesia. In addition, in 1208, Berthold’s son Otto married the heiress to the county of Burgundy.48 This was the apex of the Andechs’ power (Figure 5). The family’s fortunes declined after their suspected involvement in the murder of Philip of Swabia in 1208, and the male line died out in 1251, leaving a lineage of female saints that included St. Mechthild of Diessen (d. 1160), her sister St. Euphemia, abbess of Altomu¨nster (d. 1180), their grandniece St. Hedwig of Silesia (1174–1243), and Hedwig’s niece, St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207–1231).49 Many of Engelhard’s connections follow the networks this family created. By the late Middle Ages, the monks of Langheim remembered the counts of Andechs-Merania and the related families of Orlamu¨nde and Truhendigen as the abbey’s founders. This memory probably represents the later importance of these families rather than their initial assistance.50 Although much about Langheim’s earliest history remains obscure, it is likely that the impetus for its foundation came from Bishop Otto I of Bamberg (1102–1139), and that Otto promoted the monastery to protect against the growing influence of the Andechs rather than as part of an alliance with them.51 As bishop, Otto encouraged the spread of new monastic movements, establishing or reorganizing religious communities not only in the dioceses of Bamberg, Wu¨rzburg, and Regensburg but also as far afield as Passau, Halberstadt, and Carinthia.52 He had no strong allegiance to any particular religious order; some of his foundations adopted the Hirsau constitutions, others followed Cistercian customs, and still others were communities of Augustinian canons. Langheim was not the only foundation that merged Otto’s political interests with his interest in monastic reform. In the early twelfth century, Bamberg was still a relatively new diocese, established in 1007 as part of an expansion of Christian structures into Wendish territory, and the Bamberg bishops only gradually extended rights and jurisdictions over land that had earlier belonged to the dioceses of Wu¨rzburg and Eichsta¨tt. Otto’s assistance in

Konrad

†c. 1213 †c. 1241 m. Anne of Bohemia

Henry

Hedwig

†1214

Sophie

†1243 m. Duke Henry of Silesia

†1268 Abbess of Trebnitz

Gertrude son

Ekbert

†1237 Bishop of Bamberg (1203–1237)

Mechthild

Otto

Sophie †1275 m. Henry II Duke of Brabant (educated at Kitzingen buried Villiers O. Cist)

Kunigunde (2)

†1234

Andreas

†1254 Abbess of Kitzingen

Mechthild

†1250 Abbess of Gerbstedt

Bertha (2)

† ?? Nun at Admont

†1297 Abbess of Aldenberg (O. Prem)

Gertrude

†1241

Coloman

†1251 Patriarch of Aquileia

Berthold

†1231 m. Count Louis of Thuringia

Elisabeth

Poppo (2)

†1245 Provost and Bishop-elect of Bamberg

†1241 Count of Thuringia

†1270 King of Hungary

Euphemia †1180 Abbess of Altomünster

Hermann

Bela IV

Anna Maria

†1213 m. King Andreas II of Hungary

Gertrude

Sophia

†1218? m. Count Poppo VI of Henneberg

†1237 m. Tsar Ivan Asen II of Bulgaria

†1201 m. King Philip II of France

Agnes

†1245? m. Margrave Berthold of Vohburg

Mechthild

†1160 †1196 Magistra of Diessen Bishop of Bamberg Abbess of Edelstetten (1177–1196)

Figure 5. The Andechs-Merania and their descendants. Adapted from Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250, by Jonathan R. Lyon. Copyright 2013 by Cornell University. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press.

†c. 1214 †c. 1206–8

Boleslaw

†1234 Duke of Merania m. Beatrice of Burgundy

Agnes

Henry

†1228 Margrave of Istria m. Sophia of Weichselburg

Otto I

Kunigunde †c. 1207 m. Count Eberhard III of Eberstein

Berthold III † 1204 Duke of Merania m. Agnes of Groitzsch

Henry

†after 1177 Abbot of Millstatt

†1148 m. Kunizza of Giech

Gisela

Berthold II

†1188 † c.1165 Margrave of Istria m. Count Diepold II m. 1. Hedwig of Wittelsbach of Berg m. 2. Liutgard of Denmark

Poppo

†1151 Count of Andechs m. 1. Sophia of Istria m. 2. Kunigunde of Vornbach

Berthold I

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founding the Cistercian monastery of Heilsbronn in 1132 established Bamberg’s influence on the border of these two rival dioceses; similarly, his establishment of the monastery of Arnoldstein in 1106 helped him secure control of lands in the duchy of Carinthia, a region that today lies in southern Austria and northern Slovenia.53 Langheim’s foundation strengthened the bishop’s position along the upper Main. It countered the influence of the bishop of Wu¨rzburg and the abbey of Banz, located just north of the river, but it probably also responded to the growing power of the Andechs as they spread into Franconia.54 By 1135, Count Berthold I controlled Plassenburg, a castle northeast of Bamberg along the Main.55 Soon after, Berthold’s son Poppo married Kunizza, an heiress whose property included castles at Lichtenfels and Giech that dominated the routes into Bamberg from the east. Otto’s reaction to this marriage is unknown, but by 1142, his successor, Bishop Egibert, dissolved the union and convinced Kunizza to grant him control of her inheritance. In refusing to relinquish the castles, Poppo provoked a war with the bishop. A treaty in 1143 established a compromise. By then, Kunizza had died, but the bishop agreed that Poppo, his son, and his brother Berthold could retain partial use of both castles until their deaths.56 The treaty was renegotiated in 1148 after Poppo’s death during the Second Crusade, and the Andechs remained in control of these fortifications.57 If Langheim was established in 1132, then its initial foundation preceded these hostilities. But Langheim’s earliest extant records are copies of a composite document that lists a number of donations over time, and it is difficult to reconcile the dates of these gifts with the growing tensions between the bishop and the Andechs family. Otto and his ministrales provided the earliest donations. These included seigneurial rights over a village that Otto had purchased from Herman von Stahlek, the count palatine of the Rhine who was also one of the early patrons of Ebrach.58 But gifts from Poppo and Kunizza, dated 1142—the same year that the bishop of Bamberg dissolved their marriage—suggest that these documents may present as donations what were really forced transfers of property, and that much of the property that the bishops of Bamberg gave to Langheim was land they received from Kunizza before her death.59 Certainly, despite later claims, members of the Andechs family were not important early patrons. Before 1180, they appear only in these early exchanges and in an exchange of property and tithes that the bishop of Wu¨rzburg brokered in 1152.60 Even without the help of the Andechs family, however, Langheim prospered. By midcentury, it had consolidated its

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control of lands around the abbey and had established seven granges. It also had attracted enough monks and revenue by 1144 to found the abbey of Plasy near Prague.61 By the time Engelhard entered Langheim, the tension between the Andechs and the bishops of Bamberg had subsided. Sometime before 1170, the bishop and Count Berthold II cooperated in making a donation to St. Theodor in Bamberg, a Cistercian monastery for women that nuns from Wechterswinkel helped establish.62 By 1177, the Andechs gained control of the diocese. Another Otto, the son of Count Berthold I and the brother of Berthold II, became bishop of Bamberg.63 Over the next thirty years, four of Otto’s nephews and grandnephews joined Bamberg’s cathedral canons, and at least three served as cathedral provost. Of these four nephews, two later became bishops of Bamberg, one became the bishop of Wu¨rzburg, and one became the bishop of Kalocza, in Hungary, and later, the patriarch of Aquileia.64 Langheim benefited from the family connections between count and bishop. In the last two decades of the twelfth century, the bishop of Bamberg, often in conjunction with his brother or nephew, issued a series of charters confirming the monastery’s possessions and noting new gifts and purchases that further consolidated the monastery’s holdings.65 By 1204, Langheim had become the Andechs family necropolis, replacing the community of Augustinian canons and canonesses that the counts had established at Diessen near their original lands in Bavaria.66 Engelhard wrote the vita of Mechthild of Diessen at the Andechs’s request.67 A daughter of Count Berthold I, Mechthild entered the Augustinian community at Diessen as a young girl, probably around 1120. She lived at Diessen for most of her life, leaving briefly to become abbess of Edelstetten in 1153 but returning before her death in 1160. Engelhard probably composed the vita in the early years of the thirteenth century. He did not know Mechthild, and he received the main outline of her life by talking with her relatives.68 He also recognized the awkwardness of this commission, since Langheim had recently displaced Diessen as the Andechs’ burial site. He told the regular canons at Diessen that others might have been better suited to the task, and he compared himself to Isaac, asking that, as the favored younger brother, he not be accused of snatching Diessen’s blessing.69 Despite the tension between Diessen and Langheim, the regular canons accepted his work. It became the first life in Diessen’s thirteenth-century legendary, accompanied by Engelhard’s letters of dedication and a set of hymns and sequences.70 However, the canons may have had the last word. They shaped

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the vita for their own purposes, later adding to it an anachronistic scene that asserted Diessen’s claim to a disputed tithe.71 Engelhard’s composition allowed the Diessen canons to remember and reuse their veneration of Mechthild, even after the Andechs began to favor Langheim.72 Members of the Andechs family read Engelhard’s vita. Appended to the vita in one of the Poznan´ manuscripts is a story Engelhard received from a “holy virgin” who visited Engelhard to supply a tale missing from the vita.73 The visitor was another Mechthild, the daughter of Berthold III, Count of Andechs and Duke of Merania. This Mechthild had received her education at the Cistercian community of St. Theodor in Bamberg, and she later became the abbess of Kitzingen, a monastery near Wu¨rzburg. Her story depicts the older Mechthild’s activities as a scribe and provides more intimate details about the importance of such work for Mechthild’s piety than did Engelhard’s brief description in the vita.74 The younger Mechthild would not have met her great-aunt, but her knowledge of the story suggests a female tradition of preserving family memories. Engelhard’s interaction with the younger Mechthild encourages further speculation about his connections with Andechs women. Engelhard dedicated his meditations and prayers in honor of the Virgin Mary to a sponsa Christi named “T.”75 Assuming the abbreviation reflects the first letter of the correspondent’s name, as they do in Engelhard’s other texts, this “T” poses a problem. Few Germanic women’s names begin with this letter. Tilde, however, is a common abbreviation for Mechthild. Might Engelhard have written this text for the Mechthild who provided him with the story of her greataunt? If this is the case, then Engelhard’s writings intersect with a powerful thirteenth-century lineage of religious women. Mechthild’s sister, Hedwig, also was educated at St. Theodor, but she left the abbey to marry Henry, Duke of Silesia. Hedwig retained an interest in the Cistercians. In 1203, she established the Cistercian convent of Trebnitz, which she populated with nuns from St. Theodor, including her former teacher who became abbess. Hedwig raised Agnes of Bohemia, who received her education at Trebnitz and later patronized the Franciscans and Clare of Assisi. Agnes’s sister Anna married Hedwig’s son; she also spent time at Trebnitz. Hedwig’s daughter, Gertrude, became Trebnitz’s second abbess. Another of Mechthild’s sisters, also Gertrude, married King Andreas II of Hungary who, in 1203, worked with the abbot of Heiligenkreuz, possibly Engelhard, to find a location for a new Cistercian abbey for men.76 Their daughter was St. Elizabeth of Hungary. According to testimony from Elizabeth’s canonization dossier, the

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younger Mechthild brought Elizabeth to Bamberg to reside with Mechthild’s brother, Bishop Ekbert, after the death of Elizabeth’s husband had left her homeless. Elizabeth eventually returned to Thuringia and took up residence in a leper house in Marburg, but her daughter Sophia remained at Kitzingen with her great-aunt (see Figure 5).77 There is no surviving evidence for Engelhard’s texts at St. Theodor, Kitzingen, or Trebnitz. But the two codices containing Engelhard’s compositions, now in the Raczyn´ski Library in Poznan´, Poland, may have been based on an exemplar intended for a female audience. These codices preserve nearly complete dossiers of Engelhard’s writings, and they are striking for the number of texts that describe or address religious women. In both cases, their initial provenance is unknown.78 As well as the story collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel and accounts drawn from Engelhard’s correspondence, both codices contain the life of Mechthild and Engelhard’s devotional work in honor of the Virgin Mary. They also include the texts Engelhard used to assist and correct his work of prayer and meditation, including portions of a letter that the twelfth-century monk Gerhoh of Reichersberg addressed to a community of nuns to explain that an account of the Assumption of Mary is apocryphal.79 The inclusion of Gerhoh’s letter is especially suggestive. Gerhoh corresponded with religious women, offering them spiritual direction and exegetical advice, and he may have intended his letter on the Assumption for the women at Admont.80 Engelhard’s knowledge of Gerhoh’s letter reinforces his connections with Hirsau monasteries, where Gerhoh’s works were especially popular.81 These texts again locate Engelhard at the edge of a network of religious communities whose monks collected narrative tales and were interested in the religious education and spiritual lives of women. Even if both extant Poznan´ manuscripts originated in male abbeys, it is still possible that this collection of female-focused material was copied and preserved by a community of women, perhaps at the younger Mechthild’s convent at St. Theodor, her later community at Kitzingen, or even at the monastery of Wechterswinkel.82 Even if Engelhard did not write for Mechthild and her sisters, Langheim’s connections to the Andechs introduced Engelhard to a family whose women held positions of authority—whether as countesses, queens, or abbesses—and extended their family’s sphere of influence. Both Andechs women and men supported communities of Cistercian monks and nuns and celebrated the sanctity of their aunts and sisters, preserving family stories and a sense of female lineage.83 Their patronage of Langheim influenced

Engelhard, Langheim, and the Nuns

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Engelhard’s compositions for and about women, his recognition of the influence and power of religious women, and his willingness to write to religious women as if they shared interests and patterns of spiritual development with men.

The Nuns of Wechterswinkel Engelhard’s relations with the Andechs family and with religious communities that followed the customs of Hirsau influenced the ideas he articulated in his book for the nuns of Wechterswinkel. This collection of stories demonstrates his interest in and his ideas about religious women, and it shows the importance he placed on narrative texts for teaching spiritual development. It is a small compilation of thirty-four stories, introduced by a letter of dedication and concluded with a writer’s apologia, and it probably includes many of the stories Engelhard shared earlier with the abbot of Pru¨fening (see Figure 1). Most depict Cistercians, and nearly all have male protagonists. Rather than considering the nuns as needing his instruction and pastoral care, Engelhard addressed women as peers, and he assumed they shared with monks a common religious culture and a common desire for spiritual progress. In the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, many of the newly established or restructured monasteries and houses of regular canons in German-speaking lands welcomed both men and women. Their chroniclers described women who sought to live a life modeled on the apostles, and these regular canons and monks understood ministering to religious women as part of their own apostolic life.84 When Benedictine monasteries such as St. Blasien in Swabia, Petershausen and Muri in southwestern Germany, and Admont in Austria adopted the customs established by William of Hirsau, they formed communities in which monks and nuns lived in separate spaces within the same enclosure and followed the same liturgical rhythms and duties. Other monasteries supported female recluses who were less restricted than cloistered women, while still others established priories for women that were distant from but dependent on male houses. Similarly, new communities of Augustinian and Premonstratensian canons, such as those associated with Springiersbach and Rottenbuch, often housed both sisters and brothers. Sometimes men and women were strictly separated, but in some communities men and women worked together. In some cases, these women may have been lay sisters whose labor supported the religious life of the men; in many

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cases, these women left historical traces only through their presence in necrologies.85 Authors associated with these communities described the relationships between men and women in a variety of ways. Some, such as Gerhoh of Reichersberg and Rupert of Deutz, whose texts were frequently preserved in Hirsau monasteries, articulated a spiritual equality between the sexes.86 Others, however, presented women as weak and delicate, in danger of losing their chastity, and in need of male direction and pastoral care. Texts like the Speculum virginum suggest the possibility of intellectual and religious interchange between nuns and monks but also assume a male teacher.87 At Admont, the brothers described the segregation of women as so strict that the women refused to leave their cloister during a fire. Usually, the sisters communicated with monks through a grille; they followed the same liturgical offices as the monks and at the same times but in separate areas.88 Engelhard’s life of Mechthild describes the Augustinian community of men and women at Diessen where Mechthild served as magistra. It mentions little contact between the sisters and brothers until the preparations for Mechthild’s death. At that point, “the brothers rushed in, weeping and wailing,” the provost Hartwig preached a sermon to the entire community, and the dying Mechthild cured one of the brothers of his headache. Engelhard also described Mechthild’s praise for a conversus named Conrad who had been a knight in her family’s household but who continued to assist and serve her once she converted. While abbess of Edelstetten, Mechthild had instituted enclosure for her nuns, but even then, Engelhard’s account notes that she admitted “spiritual and learned men” to the cloister to serve as “irrigators, asking each to pour out his bowls and to cool her plants with the word of God.”89 Nowhere did Engelhard describe these men as offering mass or hearing confessions, but his details make clear that enclosure did not in this case prohibit all contact with men. The establishment of Cistercian communities for women usually followed a different pattern from the Hirsau monasteries and communities of regular canons. Only recently have scholars recognized the existence of twelfth-century Cistercian nuns. The history of Cistercian women long relied on institutional documents, especially the statutes of the Cistercian Chapter General, and articulated standards for the order’s incorporation of women that even many men’s houses could not attain.90 Documents of practice, especially charters and cartularies, however, show that women were associated with the Cistercian movement from its inception. Scholars have learned to

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look for comments in papal bulls and other charters that describe communities of women as following the customs of Cistercian monks, and they no longer interpret statements that the women were “imitating” the monks as evidence that they were not “real” Cistercians.91 There is only fragmentary evidence for the particulars of these customs. In some cases, Cistercian nuns appear to have used the same customaries and liturgical books as the men.92 In the second decade of the twelfth century, Herman of Tournai described the women at Montreuil-les-Dames in the diocese of Laon as living “according to the ordo of Cıˆteaux, which is difficult even for men.”93 According to Herman, these women worked at weaving and sewing, which he understood to be women’s work, but they also harvested, cut down trees, cleared the fields, and imitated “in all things the monks of Clairvaux.” Other than a change in pronouns, a thirteenth-century customary for Cistercian nuns, written in Old French, is identical to that of the monks.94 In his search for early Cistercian liturgical texts, Chrysogonus Waddell found an early Cistercian breviary written for the monks but later transferred to a community of Cistercian nuns after the monks revised their customary.95 Yet even if some Cistercian nuns followed customs and rules written for men and were uninterested in asking for modifications, their inability to serve as priests required an adjustment in their sacramental practices. In the early years of the Cistercian order, some Cistercian monks provided pastoral care for women. The nuns in the communities of Jully (founded c. 1113), Laval-Be´nite (1119), and Tart (1125), as well as those in the houses affiliated with Tart, were often relatives of Cistercian monks or members of the families of the Cistercians’ secular patrons. Jully maintained its relations with the monks of Molesme, but other early foundations for women established pastoral connections with neighboring houses of Cistercian monks.96 Some twelfth-century female communities, such as the French monastery of Coyroux, were incorporated into the Cistercian order as double houses. In other cases, ecclesiastical authorities dissolved the women’s section of a double house when they admitted it into the order, or they moved the nuns some distance from the monks.97 Still other houses of Cistercian women were independent abbeys. Royal women founded abbeys such as the Castilian abbey of Las Huelgas (1181) and the French abbeys of St. Antoine-desChamps (1206) and Maubuisson (1236), but knightly and bourgeois families established other communities, usually ones that were smaller and less powerful.98 By the late twelfth century, the Cistercian abbots in Chapter General

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started to pay attention to Cistercian women, suggesting that monastic officials recognized an obligation to provide pastoral care but also sought to limit these responsibilities.99 In 1191, the Chapter General first regulated the admission of female houses into the order, and in 1213, it sought to put existing women’s houses under the control of Cistercian abbots, to insist that nuns be fully enclosed, and to prohibit the foundation of new houses without the Chapter’s consent. In 1228, the abbots issued still more regulations, instituting a moratorium on the acceptance of communities of women into the order.100 Engelhard sent his collection of stories to the nuns of Wechterswinkel after 1188, at a time when Cistercian abbots had started to institutionalize their connections with Cistercian women, to regularize their pastoral responsibilities, and to control aspects of nuns’ lives that may earlier have been autonomous. Wechterswinkel’s own history illustrates the difficult task of locating twelfth-century Cistercian nuns, as well as the complicated process of untangling the affiliation of women with the order. Heinrich Wagner’s recent edition of Wechterswinkel’s cartulary brings into question Wechterswinkel’s reputation as the oldest community of Cistercian nuns in Germanspeaking lands, but Wagner’s criterion for determining Wechterswinkel’s affiliation is institutional recognition by the Chapter General, which is overly restrictive.101 Embrico, bishop of Wu¨rzburg (1125–1147), founded Wechterswinkel in a mountainous region about ninety kilometers north of Wu¨rzburg sometime before 1140. It may initially have been a double house, for in an undated entry in its cartulary, Bishop Embrico noted that he wished to support the “religion, devotion, abstinence, and all kinds of holiness of the brothers and sisters attending God in Wechterswinkel.”102 By 1144, however, Pope Lucius II addressed a bull just to the abbess and sisters in which he approved the nuns’ request to dedicate their monastery to St. Margaret and determined that they should arrange their monastery according to the Rule of St. Benedict.103 The community appears to have flourished. In 1147, it sent eighteen nuns to establish the monastery of Ichtershausen in the diocese of Mainz. In a charter recording Ichtershausen’s foundation, the archbishop of Mainz approved the women’s desire to follow Cistercian customs, noting that their provost would nonetheless come from a community of Augustinian canons.104 It is unclear whether this new establishment meant that the women at Wechterswinkel already followed Cistercian customs or whether the eighteen nuns left in part because they wished to join a community that did, but since the new abbess at Ichtershausen

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came from Wechterswinkel, the former scenario seems more likely. Eugenius III’s papal bull for Wechterswinkel in 1150 called some of the monastery’s property “granges” (grangiam), suggesting that Wechterswinkel had adopted some Cistercian economic practices.105 In 1157, nuns from Wechterswinkel established a second community, St. Theodor in Bamberg, that also followed Cistercian customs. Gertrude von Stahleck, the wife of Herman, Pfalzgraf of the Rhineland, helped establish this new house.106 Gertrude entered Wechterswinkel when Herman retired to Ebrach just before his death in 1156, but she almost immediately sought advice from Hildegard of Bingen about moving elsewhere.107 Hildegard initially advised Gertrude to set aside her noble status and the riches of the world and remain at Wechterswinkel, but in a second letter, she suggested that Gertrude find a new community that better nurtured her body and soul. Gertrude may have found Wechterswinkel’s isolation and its customs too difficult, for Hildegard also warned Gertrude to make sure that her new community was not so relaxed as to become a place where spiritual people and seculars lived together with no distinction between them.108 Since Gertrude’s new community at St. Theodor was established in a former hospital in the town of Bamberg, it was less isolated than Wechterswinkel. By 1180, a papal legate noted that it too followed the institutes of the Cistercian brothers.109 It was not until 1241, in a bull pope Gregory IX issued for Wechterswinkel, that an ecclesiastical official first mentioned Wechterswinkel’s affiliation with the Cistercian order.110 There are a number of signs, however, that the women had adopted some Cistercian customs in the twelfth century. Eugenius III’s bull in 1150 not only mentioned granges but also remarked that the abbey was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, as were the Cistercian abbeys for men.111 In 1181, the Cistercian abbot of Ebrach began to appear on Wechterswinkel’s charters, and in the early thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III asked the Cistercian abbots of Ebrach and Bildhausen to negotiate a dispute over Wechterswinkel’s tithes. A bull issued by Pope Alexander IV, long thought to have been Pope Alexander III’s from almost a century earlier, mentioned that the women at Wechterswinkel had accepted the institutes of the Cistercian brothers before a general council, possibly the Fourth Lateran of 1215.112 This official affiliation would have followed the Cistercian Chapter General’s ruling of 1213 that ordered Cistercian women to be placed under the direction of Cistercian men. Nonetheless, the bishop of Wu¨rzburg retained the responsibility for the nuns’ pastoral care, and it was only in the late thirteenth

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century that Wechterswinkel became formally linked to the Cistercian monks at Bildhausen.113 Exactly how and why Engelhard of Langheim developed contacts with the nuns of Wechterswinkel remain unclear. Langheim’s relations with Ebrach may have initiated the interactions, or it may have been through the abbey of Cistercian nuns at St. Theodor in Bamberg, where Count Berthold II had placed his daughters Mechthild and Hedwig to be educated.114 It is possible that Engelhard met the nuns. An “Engelhardus” appears in a Wechterswinkel charter of 1181 in the company of the abbot of Ebrach, but whether this is Engelhard of Langheim remains impossible to verify.115 Wechterswinkel’s second abbess, another Mechthild, appears on charters between 1156 and 1176, but since her gravestone suggests she died around 1200, it is likely she is the “M” to whom Engelhard dedicated his collection of stories.116 The dearth of charters for Wechterswinkel in the late twelfth century and the early years of the thirteenth implies that the abbey may have temporarily fallen on hard times, difficulties that often provoked ecclesiastical officials to link women’s communities more formally with the Cistercian order. Engelhard might have sent the nuns his stories because they already thought of themselves as Cistercian, but it is also possible he sought to encourage them to become Cistercian. In either case, he shared his composition with the nuns at a time when Wechterswinkel began to develop closer relations with male Cistercian communities. But unlike the Cistercian abbots and other officials, Engelhard used stories rather than visitations and regulations to connect women to the Cistercian order.

Gendering Monks and Nuns When Erbo of Pru¨fening praised the stories Engelhard had sent him, Engelhard responded by constructing an elaborate humility trope. Erbo’s compliments had not convinced him to come out from under his basket, Engelhard told Erbo, but he now would venture to write from beneath it. Still, Engelhard worried that he produced more smoke than light, and he wished to avoid the reproof of the apostle who had declared that women should be silent in church. “I confess I am a woman,” Engelhard continued. “I do not compare myself to a man. I do not choose myself as a father—I mean a father in strength not position. It is for men to do great things, to endure weighty things—would that I had their strength but not their position! For I, the

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small and weak man that you know me to be, am not sufficient for office, and I seek the strength.”117 Engelhard was not alone among Cistercian monks in describing himself as a woman. Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons on the Song of Songs used complex feminized images that described the reformed soul as the Bride of Christ, presented the nurturing of abbots as maternal, and compared monks in the early stages of their monastic development to the maidens surrounding the Bride. Bernard too had called himself a woman to contrast his monastic position to the male qualities of bishops.118 For the most part, however, Bernard used his feminized language to address monks, teaching them to perform a variety of female roles so as to become better men.119 Engelhard’s writings take Bernard’s metaphorical language out of an all-male environment. His friendships and patronage networks had brought him into contact with powerful women, and he reconsidered the gendered qualities of strength and weakness. Just as Engelhard described himself to Erbo as both a woman and a little weak man, insufficiently strong for the dignity of an office but still seeking to become strong, so he thought the same progression possible for religious women. In describing and addressing a single sociological category of monks and nuns who were neither educated priests nor lay women, Engelhard blurred gendered distinctions and came close to making Bernard’s metaphorical language a reality. Engelhard’s writings express none of the suspicion of women that some of his Cistercian contemporaries articulated. He wrote two letters of dedication to women, and in both he addressed them as equals. In neither did he articulate a pastoral or didactic tone that emphasized his clerical status. In writing the abbess of Wechterswinkel, he adopted a humble stance, addressing “M” as “lady and mother” and calling himself the “servant and son” of the nuns.120 As he did in his correspondence with Erbo, he used his letter to elaborate on the nature of friendship, insisting that friendship required equality and lamenting that he had not yet given the nuns anything in return for the many unspecified benefits he had received from them. His stories, he hoped, would be of use to those who wished to progress spiritually and would gladden the hearts of those who read them. In his devotional work for the Virgin, Engelhard also assumed an equality between monks and religious women. Not only were his prayers written in a first person that merged the voice of the male author with that of the female recipient, but his letter of dedication suggests that his writing and the prayers of “T” would unite them through their common offerings to Mary and though Mary’s shared grace and love for them.121

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Engelhard’s writings present a female piety that differed little from that of men, and he frequently described women in ways that ignored gender differences.122 His depiction of Mechthild, for instance, gave her the qualities of an ideal Cistercian abbot. She combined action with contemplation, mixed discipline with love, taught by example, avoided singularity, and refused to distinguish herself from her community.123 Engelhard did not describe Mechthild’s interactions with priests nor did he offer any eucharistic visions. Instead, he presented her as performing miracles modeled on those of Christ, driving a demon from a nun and curing both men and women of their ailments. Engelhard compared Mechthild to a litany of Biblical woman, including Judith and Esther, who fought and destroyed their enemies, and he repeatedly emphasized that she was a strong woman who had “assumed the spirit of a man.”124 At a time when many male authors described holy women as finding strength in female weakness and as enduring an inedia that connected their suffering to the sacrifice of Christ, Engelhard’s vita Mathildis instead articulates the traditional idea that a woman could overcome her sex and become strong. The stories Engelhard sent to the nuns of Wechterswinkel also assume a spiritual equality between men and women. Nearly all his stories have male protagonists; most are Cistercian monks. The fact that Engelhard thought the nuns could learn from the examples of monks implies that he assumed they shared similar concerns and the same process of spiritual development. In a number of his stories, he described monks as mothers who fostered the development of either their own souls or the souls of their fellow monks.125 In other cases, he told tales of the Virgin Mary in which Mary, like the abbess Mechthild, possessed the qualities of a strong abbot who coaxed, prodded, and disciplined her monks.126 But it is Engelhard’s story of brother Joseph, with which he concluded his collection for the nuns, that demonstrates most clearly Engelhard’s blurring of gender distinctions and his recognition that women and men both could follow the institutes of the Cistercian order. Engelhard added the story of brother Joseph to his libellus before he sent it to the nuns. His tale is the earliest version of what later became known as the story of Hildegund of Scho¨nau, an account of a young monk to whom his brothers assigned a female gender at death.127 Engelhard explicitly offered the tale to both men and women, depicting Joseph’s spiritual struggle as one applicable to monks and nuns alike. Yet Engelhard’s uncertainty as to whether Joseph possessed male or female characteristics nearly made real the metaphorical transformations in the Cistercians’ fluid language of gender.128

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His story suggests a dynamic process of spiritual formation that came close to removing distinctions of sex, again suggesting the commonalities between the nuns and monks that made up his audiences. Engelhard presented most of his story in Joseph’s voice, allowing Joseph to provide a first-person narration of the adventures that led to his entrance into Scho¨nau. Joseph’s account of his life, told on his deathbed, is the tale of a young man who persevered when faced with numerous difficulties. In echoing themes in Bernard of Clairvaux’s parables that show how divine aid could help a weak youth endure his trials, the story offered a message familiar to many Cistercians. Orphaned as a child while on pilgrimage, Joseph was left destitute on the streets in Tyre, where he begged to survive. Eventually, he returned to Europe, received an education, and entered the household of the archbishop of Cologne. Sent across the Alps with the archbishop’s message to the pope, he fell in with a thief who left him with a bag of stolen goods. Accused of robbery, he proved his innocence with an ordeal, but the thief ’s family, angry that their relative had been accused, hung him anyway. Joseph endured three days on a gibbet with angels supporting his feet, he saw his sister’s soul transported to heaven, and he learned that he would follow her in three years. Shepherds eventually cut Joseph from the noose, and he found he was already near the papal court in Verona. After finishing his task, he entered the male monastery of Scho¨nau at the advice of a female recluse and in thanks for his deliverance. Joseph ended his tale by noting that the foretold day of his death had arrived. If Joseph’s own story describes a weak youth whom God assisted, Engelhard framed Joseph’s tale with an introduction and a conclusion that brought questions of gender to the fore. “This man was a woman,” Engelhard proclaimed as he started his account, “but no one knew it.” Throughout his introduction, Engelhard tried to distinguish male from female. He thought it surprising no one had noticed Joseph was a woman, even though “her weakness [infirmitas] frequently proclaimed it. What could she do? She did not know how to act like a man [viriliter] since her sex prevented it, especially among us where all are strong [fortia].”129 Yet after establishing this gendered dichotomy of strength and weakness, Engelhard undercut it, finding Joseph’s behavior no different from that of other monks. Novices often were weary and exhausted. “But what in this seems female, what to be suspected as foreign and new?” Engelhard asked. “In those days it was unheard of for a woman to attempt something so arduous.”130 In fact, Engelhard’s other stories make clear there was nothing female about a novice’s difficulties, for he

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described a number of novices, including himself, who had despaired of their ability to persevere as Cistercians. The “weakness” with which Engelhard tried to characterize women could also describe the spiritual development of men. When he described Joseph’s death, Engelhard again tried to stabilize sexual distinctions. Again he had limited success. The monks who bathed Joseph’s dead body assigned it a female gender, but Engelhard did not linger on Joseph’s appearance. He described the body as “stripped to be washed, but only by a few and likewise only for the briefest time, for immediately it was re-covered with astonishment and wonder.”131 Instead of emphasizing physical differences, Engelhard shifted to grammatical distinctions. Whereas only a few monks saw the body, most of the monks in the monastery heard the abbot change the Latin endings from masculine to feminine in the midst of his prayers. As a result, for the majority of the community, Joseph suddenly and miraculously became a woman. The linguistic uncertainty continued when the monks recorded the death for future commemoration. They were not sure what to write since the name Joseph “signified the masculine and not the feminine.”132 Words, Engelhard implied, should reflect the ontologically determined sex of their subjects. Yet even with words, gender remained fluid, for Engelhard did not consistently use female endings in his prose. In both his introduction and the story told by Joseph, he used masculine endings; the chapter rubrics, which might not have been his, made his protagonist feminine. At the conclusion of his tale, Engelhard again employed strength and weakness to try to differentiate men from women. Again, he confused his categories. Although sure that Joseph was female, Engelhard could not decide if this monk was weak or strong. At times, he thought God worked through female weakness for, as a woman, Joseph was a “delicate girl in whom the virtue of God and the wisdom of Christ could mock the devil.”133 Yet Joseph also overcame the female sex, acting as “a weak woman who had forgotten her sex, who entered and finished the battle, and triumphed over the enemy.” Like the young knights in Bernard of Clairvaux’s Parables who fought against temptations and learned to become strong, Joseph also “valiantly [fortiter] but briefly undertook to make strong [fortes] battles in war, so that as victory was achieved by this weak [infirmiori] knight over the strong [forti] enemy, so glory increased for her king.”134 This had been the message of Joseph’s own narration as well. Whether as a young man or as a young woman, Joseph

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resembled other virtuous monks in fighting valiantly to overcome weakness and become strong. Ultimately, Engelhard could assert a distinction between the sexes only by suggesting that men and women should read his story differently. He told his audience, “I wish this to be a wonder for women but an example for men, so that while women boast about her, men are ashamed that today we are not lacking women who dare strong things [fortia] for Christ, while the majority of men follow the weakness of women.” In the Poznan´ manuscripts, which perhaps were codices intended for women, Engelhard was even more explicit that women should not imitate Joseph. These manuscripts contain an additional line. “But I do not encourage this in women,” Engelhard continued, “for while many are equal in strength, they are unequal in fate [fortuna], and often the stronger falls at the same turning point in battle in which the weaker triumphs.”135 Clearly, Engelhard did not want women to dress as men and enter male monasteries, and his desire to prevent women from imitating Joseph may have been an expression of what Loraine Simmons has called “proximity anxiety.”136 By insisting that women who followed male customs not enter male monasteries, Engelhard attempted to stabilize gender differences in a story that nearly slipped beyond his control. Nonetheless, even these statements blurred the markers of strength and weakness that Engelhard initially used to distinguish men from women. Men who had become weak needed to imitate a strong woman, while women had already become strong despite their weakness. Engelhard tried to make sense of Joseph’s seeming transformation from male to female. As part of a textual community based on Bernard of Clairvaux’s commentaries on the Song of Songs, Cistercian monks were accustomed to such metaphorical transformations. Yet Engelhard’s story undermines the idea that differences in strength and weakness could differentiate between the sexes, and it suggests that metaphorical shifts in gender identity might become a reality. Had what was usually a metaphor taken place in reality? Did a monk with a female soul became fully female at death? Or, if Joseph was assigned female at birth but could be read as a monk, then perhaps a woman could become a man? Engelhard guarded against these transformations by suggesting that Joseph had been a woman all along, but in his efforts to stabilize binary gender distinctions, he also accepted the possibility that women could successfully follow the customs of Cistercian monks as long as they did so in separate communities. Both monks and

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nuns could move from weakness to strength and could share the lessons of Engelhard’s stories as they sought to progress through the discipline of Cistercian life.

Conclusion Engelhard did not share the story of brother Joseph with Erbo of Pru¨fening. He added the tale to his libellus when he sent it to nuns who he thought had an interest in the observances of Cistercian monks. It is not clear whether the nuns of Wechterswinkel already followed Cistercian practices or whether Engelhard hoped they might begin to do so. In either case, Engelhard described a process of spiritual development that he advocated for both Cistercian men and women. In his story of brother Joseph, the movement from weakness to strength had little to do with the gender of those seeking to progress, and the complex gendered identifications employed when Cistercian monks wrote about other men took on new implications when used for an audience of nuns and monks. As a result, Engelhard marked his audience as a distinct sociological group, differentiated from those clearly defined as either strong men or weak women and sharing the same gendered characteristics. The fragmentary information about Engelhard of Langheim and his extant texts and manuscripts depicts a man interested in the persuasive power of stories who wished to teach a process of spiritual development that he thought nuns and monks could share. Many of Engelhard’s friendships and connections grew out of Langheim’s patronage networks, especially with the men and women of the Andechs family. Nor did his connections remain limited to a single monastic order, for Engelhard interacted with monks in the Hirsau congregation, and he shared with them an interest in collecting stories and in supporting religious women. His writings for and about women rely less on binary gendered distinctions and more on a monastic culture distinct from a clerical and scholastic environment. Engelhard could not fully ignore the social changes around him. He was aware of and subject to the growing institutional authority of the Cistercian Chapter General, his story collecting relied on the order’s international networks, and his interactions with the Andechs family linked him with a kinship group whose alliances spread from France to Hungary and whose family culture celebrated a lineage of religious women. His writings show his efforts

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to preserve and communicate a Cistercian culture while incorporating elements of a changing society. Even his reuse of the traditional trope of a strong woman who could overcome the limitations of her sex had new implications when he extended this language to describe both monks and nuns. The writings of this Franconian monk who sought to maintain the traditions of his order in a sociopolitical and religious environment at a distance from the Cistercian cultural center display a nonsacerdotal religiosity that could be shared by monks and nuns who wished to find sacramental possibilities in their religious lives.

chapter 2

Stories and Community Seeing, Hearing, and Writing

It takes about two hours to drive from Kloster Pru¨fening, on the western edge of Regensburg, to the village of Klosterlangheim, just south of the basketmaking town of Lichtenfels. Only when you leave the autobahn near Bamberg and drive through the northern part of the “Franconian Switzerland” do you experience the forest and steep hills surrounding the valley where the monks of Langheim built their abbey. In the twelfth century, it was not as easy to travel between these two abbeys. It would have taken several days on horseback and twice as long on foot, making it unlikely that their monks met frequently. Distance was not the only obstacle. Although Bishop Otto I of Bamberg helped establish both Pru¨fening and Langheim, these communities belonged to different religious congregations and were situated in different dioceses with distinct ecclesiastical assemblies. Even letter writing required access to expensive parchment, pen and ink, a ready messenger, and, in some cases, permission from a monastic superior. Despite these constraints, Engelhard of Langheim and Erbo of Pru¨fening maintained an epistolary friendship. Engelhard sent Erbo stories without receiving permission from his abbot, and Erbo provided Engelhard with parchment so that he could continue to write.1 Six of their letters survive. In them, the men express their love, admiration, and gratitude for one another’s friendship, and they discuss the stories that Engelhard composed and shared. Engelhard and Erbo used the circulation of letters to span the distance between their monasteries, but they thought of their correspondence in notably different ways. Erbo employed rhetorical constructions that consciously

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addressed the role of writing in forging connections between absent friends. He told Engelhard that “the letters running from here and from there” were “sweeter to [him] than honey and honeycomb,” and he acknowledged the mimetic value of their correspondence. “Your entire character set down by your pen is laid out before me, your friend, for imitating rather than examining,” he exclaimed.2 Engelhard’s writing “watered [his] arid heart” and “made it fertile.”3 Engelhard, in comparison, ignored the textual quality of this friendship and cast their relationship in terms of oral communication and personal interactions. He told Erbo, “What happened to me with you is what happened to Job with God: ‘I heard of you with the hearing of the ear; now I see you with my eye.’ For I loved you before I saw you. I saw and loved more. And I said with the queen of Sheba, ‘True is the word which I heard . . . you surpass your reputation with your virtues.’ ”4 In employing these Biblical passages, Engelhard portrayed a relationship based on hearing and seeing rather than one based on letters between distant friends. Engelhard’s and Erbo’s comments reflect their awareness of the social implications of written communication. Both monks recognized that texts bridged distances, and they thought their letters would make the absent seem present.5 Still, they expressed different attitudes toward writing. Cognizant of the written character of his correspondence, Erbo acknowledged the mimetic qualities of texts and thought that authors could imprint their personality in their writings.6 Engelhard used his compositions in precisely the way that Erbo depicted, for he wrote narratives whose characters provided exemplary models for audiences of monks and nuns at a distance from his own monastery. But he did not acknowledge the written qualities of his communications. Instead, he employed rhetorical tropes that emphasized seeing and hearing rather than reading, and he encouraged audiences to imagine the characters in his stories as if they were physically present. Engelhard was aware that the production of texts contributed to the formation of late twelfth-century institutions. He was a monastic official when the bishop of Bamberg issued charters to confirm Langheim’s property. He wrote a saint’s life during the period in which the papacy began to control the process of canonization and establish standards for saint-making. He was an abbot when the Cistercian order started to codify its statutes, he may have carried to another abbot a letter containing a reprimand, and he may have been removed from his own position by a written decree of the Chapter General. Like some of his Cistercian contemporaries, Engelhard collected monastic stories that preserved memories of earlier generations of Cistercians.

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His particular insistence on recreating oral qualities in written compositions, however, suggests he rejected the representational and intermediary qualities of textual communication even as he incorporated into his writings new ideas about evidence and proof. He sought to recreate within his stories the intimacy and exemplary lessons of a face to face community so that he could teach nuns and monks at a distance the lessons they would have learned in a traditional Cistercian community.

Cistercian Stories: Teaching by Example Engelhard wrote stories. He made a conscious decision to do so, for he recognized the prestige of analytical and argumentative treatises. He even constructed an elaborate humility trope in which he compared himself and his fondness “for talking in a rustic manner” to those who “want to fix everything according to weight and measure and plan in the manner of God.” He also complained that those with scholastic educations were too “occupied with laws and decrees” to take on the task of writing a saint’s life.7 He shared an interest in narrative with the members of Austrian monasteries who compiled the MLA as well as with the Cistercian monks who gathered monastic tales. These late twelfth-century authors participated in a long-standing monastic tradition of collecting and composing stories for didactic and memorial purposes, and their accounts, like those of their predecessors, sought to shape the spiritual development of their audiences. Engelhard’s stories and the stories related by other Cistercians are often called “exempla.” Although there is no single definition of this term, it implies a genre that connects the Cistercians’ story collections to the thirteenth-century respositories of illustrative stories that friars and other preachers used to enliven their sermons. Jacques Le Goff, in a much-cited definition, considers an exemplum “a brief narrative presented as truthful (that is, historical) and used in a discourse (usually a sermon) to convince listeners by offering them a salutary lesson.”8 Both Jean-Claude Schmitt and Brian Patrick McGuire employ Le Goff ’s definition to argue that the Cistercian stories provide a transition between localized, detailed, and often oral monastic tales and the more abstract and generalized exempla that appear in encyclopediac collections or as literary texts.9 Yet the Cistercians themselves did not usually call their stories exempla. Engelhard at times used miracula and at times referred to his accounts as historia, while other Cistercians, if

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they titled their collections at all, labeled their contents as miracula or visiones.10 Short narratives used as part of a rhetorical project of persuasion, education, and the cultivation of virtue have an exemplary function even when not labeled exempla.11 Such narratives have classical and late antique antecedents, and they appear in chronicles, letters, and saints’ lives as well as in collections of stories. Scholars studying exemplarity and narrative posit that medieval exempla are not static moral tales used only to provide a specific illustration of a general precept but are instead generative stories that teach through the very process of narration.12 Rather than linking a particular example to a universal model, exempla connect particular to particular, encouraging their audiences to recollect their experiences, to organize their memories, and to link these memories with the experiences recounted in the tales. Exempla teach audiences to imagine themselves and others and to transform their emotions, their values, and themselves.13 Engelhard’s narratives work in this fashion. They draw on the particular and the immediate and, by asking audiences to imagine themselves in relation to the characters in the tales, they encourage the process of monastic formation. Monks told stories from the earliest days of Christian monasticism. In late antiquity, monks preserved in writing the oral conversations and personal encounters through which saintly teachers transformed the lives of their disciples. By transmitting collections of aphorisms and edifying stories, these texts joined saint, author, and audience in a shared process of spiritual development.14 Written stories provided material for liturgical commemoration and devotion as well as models for emulation, and their authors at times selfconsciously recognized that writing could make the absent seem present and that their simple rhetorical style might mirror the ascetic and humble character of their subjects.15 John Cassian’s De institutis coenobiorum and Collationes brought eastern Mediterranean monastic stories into western Europe, and his works as well as the Latin translations of both the Apophthegmata and the Vitae patrum became standard readings in European monasteries throughout the Middle Ages. Gregory the Great’s Dialogues also became ubiquitous monastic texts. Gregory constructed his work as a conversation with the deacon Peter, and he used Peter’s questions to structure its organization and its lessons. Gregory’s stories of saints demonstrated how to live an ideal Christian life in preparation for the immortality of the soul. In the second book of the Dialogues, he constructed a saint’s life from stories of Benedict of Nursia,

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showing Benedict’s ability to discern hidden things and teach his disciples. In the remaining three books, Gregory recounted stories of other Italian holy men to instruct his audience in Christian virtue and to illustrate the presence of the divine on earth.16 Like John Cassian, Gregory offered stories that shaped the spiritual growth of his audience. Later monastic authors similarly assembled short narratives into larger didactic projects. In the 1140s, for instance, Peter the Venerable of Cluny collected monastic tales to highlight how the miraculous works of God could instruct Christian believers. In selecting, organizing, and interpreting these stories, most of which had previously circulated orally, Peter emphasized that his composition memorialized these miracles in writing so they could transform his audience. His De miraculis presented Cluny as the center of twelfth-century religious reform, and it promoted Peter’s conception of Cluniac life and practices as best leading to salvation.17 By the late twelfth century, story collecting had become an important Cistercian practice, especially for the monks at Clairvaux and its affiliated abbeys.18 These Cistercians were not alone in collecting stories. A variety of late twelfth-century authors, both monastic and secular, compiled and composed narratives of miracles, visions, wonders, and otherworldly journeys.19 Nonetheless, the Cistercians’ collections served an important function for the order, for they reminded the monks of their history and their common ideals at a time in which the Cistercians’ cultural, geographic, and economic differences had become apparent.20 Just as the abbots in Chapter General codified and circulated their decisions to unify the Cistercians’ culture, so the creation of written texts that preserved and spread exemplary stories about Cistercian holy men presented a common culture in a less administrative and less juridical a fashion.21 The Cistercians’ story collections vary in their contents, their usage, and their expected audience.22 The long process of preparing documents and advocating for the canonization of Bernard of Clairvaux probably influenced the formation of Clairvaux’s first two collections. Whereas Bernard’s vitae include stories that demonstrate his service to the Church, these early Cistercian collections contain more intimate stories about Bernard and his monks.23 The Collectaneum exemplorum ac visionum Clarevallense (hereafter Collectaneum) may be a text that Prior John assembled around 1174; the thirteenth-century Chronicon Clarevallense mentioned this collection.24 The Collectaneum is something of a miscellany, including excerpts from Elizabeth of Scho¨nau’s visions; stories

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drawn from the works of Bede, Gregory the Great, and Odo of Cluny; the vision of Trundal; and a treatise on the mass. It also records stories about Bernard that circulated at Clairvaux. It starts with a preface that warns the reader not to reject the stories that are not pleasing or that lack the “testimony of certitude,” and it asserts that its tales are not “works of men but wonders of God” that should “arouse a sense of devotion in the reader.” Further, it declares that its stories “require faith not reason, assent not argument, the simple mind not the scrupulous one.”25 It also refuses to claim any specific author. “This book does not have an author,” this anonymous collector wrote, “for there are many who have written something in it, bearing their own pen for themselves. Therefore, none of their own names prefigure the title of this book, for that would be unjust.”26 The Collectaneum is preserved in only one manuscript but, as the preface notes, it was written in multiple hands. It appears to have been used at Clairvaux alone and had little if any circulation.27 Herbert of Clairvaux composed his Liber visionum et miraculorum Clarevallensium (hereafter Liber miraculorum) a few years later, probably around 1178 or 1179. Unlike the Collectaneum, this text has an author but no preface, and its multiple recensions spread extensively throughout the order and beyond.28 Herbert must have known of the Collectaneum, but he chose not to repeat its stories verbatim. Instead, he composed new versions of already-circulating Cistercian tales, and he ignored much of the nonCistercian material that the Collectaneum recorded. The majority of Herbert’s stories depict Cistercian monks, and they focus on Bernard of Clairvaux. Neither the Collectaneum nor Herbert’s Liber miraculorum presents tales in a programmatic way, and neither provides authorial commentary to link their stories. By the last decade of the twelfth century, Cistercian authors started to structure their collections to support particular interests and concerns. Conrad of Eberbach’s Exordium magnum, which he started at Clairvaux and finished at Eberbach in the decades between 1180 and 1215, copied and elaborated many of Herbert’s stories, but Conrad placed them in a historical and polemical framework with a narrative commentary, and he included excerpts from earlier Cistercian histories.29 Monks in a northern French monastery affiliated with Clairvaux assembled another large compilation, the Collectio exemplorum Cisterciensis (hereafter Collectio), around the year 1200; they drew stories from multiple written and oral sources and organized them according to the virtues and vices.30 Caesarius of Heisterbach,

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who composed his Dialogus miraculorum in the second and third decades of the thirteenth century, also placed his stories in a didactic frame, but he embedded his tales in a conversation between novice and teacher and organized them according to categories of moral instruction.31 Still other collections of stories became intertwined with thirteenth-century Cistercian chronicles.32 Yet whether recording oral tales or written ones, whether presenting stories within chronicles or organized according to the virtues, these collections demonstrated the monks’ desire to record memories and educate others.33 Engelhard shared with other Cistercian storytellers an interest in preserving stories of holy monks. He assembled his collection of stories in the last decades of the twelfth century, and he continued to write throughout his life. Containing only thirty-four stories, Engelhard’s work is shorter than the compilations assembled at Clairvaux and its affiliates.34 Engelhard probably collected most his tales in the mid-1180s, after the completion of both the Collectaneum and Herbert’s Liber miraculorum but before Conrad of Eberbach began to circulate his Exordium magnum. It seems likely Engelhard was aware of the projects at Clairvaux, perhaps from his trips to the annual Chapter General, since he noted in his letter to the nuns of Wechterswinkel that there existed other “writings” whose stories might be reconciled with his.35 His text is extant in four thirteenth-century manuscripts and a fourteenthcentury collection of exemplary material. It circulated widely enough that Caesarius of Heisterbach used some of Engelhard’s accounts in his Libri VIII miraculorum.36 Engelhard’s text differs from those of his contemporaries in important ways. His is one of the few Cistercian story collections assembled outside of Clairvaux’s affiliation, and his composition illuminates the ways the Cistercians at a distance from the Cistercians’ center retold Cistercian tales. Engelhard shared stories with his friend Erbo of Pru¨fening and dedicated his collection to a community of nuns, suggesting his willingness to circulate Cistercian tales outside his male community. In his dedication, in the author’s apology, and between his stories, he commented on his process of collection and his expectations for how his audiences might respond. Finally, he shifted the focus in his stories from an emphasis on the virtues of holy men to the depiction of everyday behaviors and objects that channeled the divine to earth. Central to his project was his desire to recreate oral qualities in his compositions, even as he recognized that he used written texts to connect to those who were distant from him.

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Between Oral and Written Engelhard wrote from outside of Clairvaux’s orbit. His is the first known collection of stories to originate in southeastern Germany and from a house affiliated with Morimond rather than Clairvaux.37 He insisted that he recorded only stories about things he had seen himself or had heard orally from others.38 Aware of existing written collections, Engelhard instead recorded tales that traveled through word of mouth. Still, his stories participated in the monks’ literate and textual culture, for they show a complex oscillation between the written and the oral that Engelhard himself probably did not recognize. The rapid growth in the use of written documents in twelfth-century Europe transformed communication practices. By the end of century, documents often seemed invested with the authority of those who issued them, negating the need for face to face contact. Texts no longer were secondary to personal interactions or to the binding power of ritual. Organized archives and volumes with reference markings began to serve as depositories of information, supplementing and, in some cases, replacing oral traditions and communal memory. These developments had social and cultural consequences, aiding the formation of administrative institutions, influencing forms of artistic and literary representation, and shaping new patterns of thought.39 The relationship between oral and written is better understood as a broad continuum and a multidimensional set of interactions than as a linear progression. Its analysis has to consider differences in media and performance, compositional techniques, reception, and the degrees of trust invested in the interchanges.40 The use of written documentation in the European Middle Ages intertwined with expressions of political authority as well as with the formation of institutions such as chanceries, treasuries, courts, and universities.41 Monasteries were not immune to these developments, and monks quickly recognized the importance of charters and cartularies and the power of the political authorities who issued them. They used documents to protect their property, but their texts also reshaped their relations with teachers, influenced the process of regulating behaviors, and established ways for monastic orders to link communities across distances.42 The Cistercian story collections show a monastic culture in the midst of exploring the relationships between the oral and the archival. The Clairvauxaffiliated authors certainly recorded tales they had heard, but they also copied stories from one another and from texts in their libraries. The Collectaneum

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drew a substantial portion of its contents from other written sources, but as the earliest collection containing stories of Cistercian monks it also relied on oral informants for its Cistercian tales. Herbert of Clairvaux too recorded many tales that circulated orally. Conrad of Eberbach, in comparison, used a written archive, copying many of Herbert’s stories before elaborating on them, reproducing excerpts from the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux, and reusing earlier accounts of the Cistercians’ history.43 Like Conrad’s Exordium magnum, the Collectio drew on an archive of texts, repeating large portions of Herbert’s Liber miraculorum as well as many stories from non-Cistercian authors, including accounts from the Vitae patrum, Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, Eadmer’s Vita Anselmi, William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regnum, and Peter the Chanter’s Verbum abbreviatum.44 Caesarius of Heisterbach also reproduced stories recorded in other texts, but he tended to modify written tales so as to make them his own. He also relied on oral informants who, in his case, included many people from outside the Cistercian order.45 Yet in some cases, an author’s claim that he “heard” a tale did not mean that the story came from an oral source.46 Conrad of Eberbach, for example, reworked one of Herbert of Clairvaux’s stories, removing some—but not all—of Herbert’s first-person verbs. As a result, Conrad’s tale implies he witnessed the story when, in fact, he had not.47 Engelhard refused to use stories that other Cistercians had recorded. “I write nothing of those things which I read or ascertained through writing,” he told the nuns of Wechterswinkel, “but I write some things I learned by seeing and many other things I learned by hearing.”48 He explained this preference as an effort to preserve and publicize what had not yet become known and to record things that “will indeed be forgotten if they are not received and fixed by the pen.”49 The idea of fixing memories through writing was a common trope, and it appeared in early thirteenth-century charters for Langheim as well.50 Furthermore, Engelhard did not wish to record stories that other authors already had told. “I do not write it,” he commented about one story he had read, “lest I put my hand into another’s field. I recount stories that are untouched by others, for there are many; may they be useful!”51 As a result, he even refused to tell tales about Bernard of Clairvaux, claiming that Bernard’s “life of virtues is already known in writing throughout the world.”52 His comments demonstrate an awareness of the vagaries of memory and the more stable nature of written texts, but they also imply that he had encountered compositions that he refused to copy. Engelhard recognized the authority of written documentation but also expressed his suspicion of it. In a scene from his life of Mechthild of Diessen,

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he described the letters that the pope and other dignitaries used to convince Mechthild to become abbess at Edelstetten.53 Writing some forty years after an event he had not witnessed, his description reflects his own perspective. He focused not on the official letters but on the messengers who carried them, noting that “the letters give testimony about the messengers, whose nobility had even more of an effect than what was written.” He even cast the scene so that Mechthild acquiesced to the eloquence of the messengers rather than the authority of sealed documents. 54 In fact, Engelhard’s entire life of Mechthild relied on information he gleaned from oral sources, for he sat with the countess who had commissioned his work for an hour to learn the main points of Mechthild’s life, and he thought that he could have written more had he known more.55 In his story collection, he also insisted it was better to learn from experience than from texts.56 Engelhard’s emphasis on oral informants does not fully encompass the complexity of his stories’ transmission or their relation to written texts. Rather than inscribing for the first time tales that were part of a nonliterate tradition, his stories originated in a literate environment, and many oscillated between written and oral. One of the final stories in his collection, an account of two necromancers, suggests that the surviving written versions of Cistercian stories may well be the visible tip of a large substratum of tales that circulated orally.57 Engelhard’s story depicts a Spanish necromancer who tried to bring a fellow necromancer back from the dead. Not only did the necromancer rely on a text to summon his friend, but the dead man appeared wearing a cloak blackened with writing both inside and out. This writing, the ghost explained, recorded both his obvious and his hidden sins. The dead man showed his friend the fire that consumed him underneath his cloak. When a spark fell on the living necromancer’s hand, the pain triggered the living man’s repentance, and he asked his dead friend where he should go to renounce the world. His friend could not help. Those in hell do not know those who are with God, he explained, but he could describe those in hell. “No order and no profession is immune from this place,” he reported, “but it has fewer of those monks who are called the gray monks.”58 After insisting that no prayers could assist him, the dead man disappeared. The friend, Engelhard reported, became a Cistercian monk. Engelhard concluded his story by giving its oral lineage. He heard the tale from Abbot Henry of Morimond, and Henry heard it from the reformed necromancer himself. In fact, Engelhard presented the former necromancer as an exemplar whose physical marks authenticated his account. “If he still

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lives today,” Engelhard told his readers, “he is living in such a way as to avoid the death of his soul, and to provide an example to others so that they might also avoid it.”59 Furthermore, he thought that the abbot of Morimond had seen the wound on the monk’s hand and described it as “a hole which never healed but always remained gaping.” Engelhard’s comments imply a chain of oral storytelling that ran from the reformed necromancer, now a Cistercian monk, through the abbot of Morimond, to Engelhard himself.60 The broader history of Engelhard’s tale, however, suggests that his account was but one strand in a web of interconnected stories that moved back and forth between written and oral versions. At the center of this web was a historical figure: the poet and schoolman, Serlo of Wilton. Serlo taught at Oxford in the middle decades of the twelfth century, joined a Cluniac monastery around 1160, subsequently became a Cistercian monk, and died in 1181.61 Before Serlo’s death, a monk at Clairvaux recorded in Clairvaux’s Collectaneum an account of Serlo’s conversion to monastic life. This anonymous scribe claimed that the story had come to him orally, from a monk who heard it from Serlo himself. The tale has striking parallels with Engelhard’s account of the necromancers. Serlo too encountered a figure returned from the dead, but his ghost was a student whom Serlo had bested at disputation.62 Like the necromancer’s friend, this ghost wore a cloak covered with writing, although his was inscribed not with his own sins but with Serlo’s syllogisms and logical arguments. Just as the necromancer’s friend warned the necromancer of his impending damnation, so the student told Serlo that the pagan philosophers in hell were waiting to torment his soul. It took three visits from this ghost to convince Serlo that his days were numbered.63 The author then abruptly ended the tale by remarking, “I recorded this vision just as I thought I had heard it, for the education of my listeners. The master left his studies and renounced the world, so led to the true philosophy.”64 The Collectaneum’s account does not note which monastery Serlo joined, nor does it clearly connect the story to the Cistercians. It leaves implicit its moral lesson about the vain ambition of the schools and the true philosophy of the monastery. The authors of both these stories claimed to hear an account from an intermediary who heard it from the protagonist himself. The monks at Clairvaux, however, brought the veracity of this chain of transmission into doubt. In the margins of the manuscript of the Collectaneum, a note explains that the monk who transmitted the story from Serlo had considered it to be true but that the tale now seemed doubtful. The marginal note continues:

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For a certain brother at Clairvaux intimately questioned this same abbot [Serlo] about its veracity before many of us. He would neither confess it nor deny it but left us uncertain, because he would not even look at what was written in this book which we brought for him to see. He said he regretted having ever let anything leave his mouth that might suggest this. He did add, however, (which supports the story’s certainty) that the account of his conversion should not be lightly dismissed, as it is the story of a man greatly inflated by his education and enmeshed in carnal desires, as he had testified about himself.65 In this unusual situation, the protagonist is confronted with the story of his life, refuses to corroborate it, and suggests that it nonetheless provides an edifying tale. Serlo’s story reappears in the thirteenth-century collections of exempla that Jacques de Vitry, Robert of Courc¸on, and Stephen of Bourbon assembled. There, it appears as a tale illustrating the ambitions and dangers of the schools.66 These later versions generally place the master in Paris rather than Oxford, and they add a corroborating detail missing from the Collectaneum’s tale. When the student opens the cloak covered in syllogisms, a drop of boiling sweat burns the master’s hand. Recognizing his imminent damnation, the master then leaves the schools for a monastery. In each of these later versions, the master presents the moral of the story in a couplet: “I abandon the vain croaking of frogs and the vain cawing of crows and proceed toward a logic that does not fear death.” These thirteenth-century renditions no longer rely on oral informants to give the story veracity, and they employ the evidence of a tangible and visible wound for corroboration. Serlo’s story seems to follow a trajectory from an oral tale to a detailed written narrative to an exemplum imbued with a clear moral but stripped of its local details. Yet Engelhard’s account of the necromancer disrupts this path by implying the existence of stories told orally that only occasionally emerged in written form. Since there is only one extant manuscript of the Collectaneum, it is doubtful that the scholastic collectors of exempla learned of Serlo’s conversion from this source. Nonetheless, after its appearance in the Collectaneum, the story seems to have developed in two divergent ways. As it became popular in a scholastic environment, the setting shifted from Oxford to Paris and the tale acquired both the image of the burned hand and the concluding moral couplet. The Cistercians, however, stopped recording it as an account of master Serlo.67 By the time Engelhard wrote about the necromancers,

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sometime after 1189, the tale had become exoticized, set in Spain and offering a vision of a damned necromancer that rebounded to praise the Cistercians. The basic structure of the story remained the same, as did the memorable images of the writing-covered cloak and the wounded hand. Yet the wounded hand, already present in Engelhard’s tale, did not appear in the stories about the master until the thirteenth century. Although it is possible that Engelhard’s written account of the necromancers influenced the theologians’ retelling of Serlo’s conversion, it is more likely that both drew on a common repertoire of elements that moved back and forth between written and oral accounts. They suggest the existence of a story that appeared in writing but whose narrative elements continued to circulate orally, reassembled in different ways. Only some of these versions emerged in a written form.68 Engelhard recounted other tales that oscillated between oral and written. A number of his stories offer alternative versions of material found in the Collectaneum or in Herbert of Clairvaux’s Liber miraculorum. There is no evidence that Engelhard copied them verbatim, again suggesting that stories recorded at Clairvaux continued to circulate orally across the order and were adapted to local audiences. Still other tales in Engelhard’s collection have textual antecedents from outside the Cistercian order. One appears to be a highly modified rendition of the account of Herman the Jew’s conversion, suggesting that what was initially a written narrative of Herman’s imagined conversion circulated as an oral tale as well.69 Three other stories, which Engelhard placed at Langheim, share elements with tales from the Vitae patrum.70 In none of these instances did Engelhard copy a text; rather, he reused older tales in a Cistercian context. At times, such stories may have influenced monastic dreams and appeared in the oral tales that Engelhard recorded. For Engelhard and his audiences, stories remained fluid and malleable, offering material that could be reread, remembered, and retold as well as recopied. A fluidity between oral and written appears as well in a story Engelhard translated from the vernacular and sent to Erbo. It is possible Engelhard heard a number of his stories in German, for he told tales of shepherds, of female weavers, and of hired laborers who would not have known Latin. In one story, he made the vernacular transmission explicit. As he told Erbo, “He who carried it to me was illiterate. Nor did he, as is vulgarly said, suck it from his fingers but, having heard the matter from a literate person, he retained the words of his mother tongue since he could not recall the vocabulary from another language.”71 Still, this was not a tale that Engelhard moved from an

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illiterate into a literate environment, for the premise of the story depends on the biblical idea that one heavenly day is equivalent to a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8).72 Furthermore, Engelhard explained that his informant had heard the tale in Latin but remembered it in German; Engelhard then retold it in Latin. In another long tale that Engelhard shared with Erbo, Engelhard remarked that the story’s protagonist, a regular canon and teacher whom the Virgin Mary pressured to join the Cistercians, conversed with Mary in Latin and that she responded in the same language; the emphasis on Latin suggests that this literate community may have communicated in the vernacular.73 Despite Engelhard’s desire to record oral stories, his compositions still locate him firmly within a literate monastic culture. The structure of the Cistercian order, with its abbots’ visitations, trips to Chapter General, and movement of monks between houses, provided an environment for stories to circulate orally even if they already had written antecedents. The kinship between Engelhard’s stories and those preserved in the Clairvaux-based collections suggests a common tradition of storytelling throughout the order, but it also shows that stories could be adapted and modified as they moved out of the order’s heartland. Engelhard’s emphasis on orality did not stem from his desire to preserve a nonliterate culture but rather from his wish to maintain the face to face qualities of his educated monastic community.

Constructing Orality Engelhard’s collection of stories differs from those of his contemporaries both because Engelhard emphasized his oral sources and because he sent his composition to a community of nuns. In sharing his tales with people outside of Langheim, he articulated more clearly than his contemporaries his reasons for writing and the ways he hoped his stories would be read. Rather than simply recording oral tales, Engelhard used rhetorical effects to create oral qualities in his written works. He crafted his tales to reproduce elements of his monastic culture in ways that could reach people at a distance from Langheim. Engelhard’s letters of dedication and his correspondence with Erbo reflect on the process of collecting and writing and consider what it means to be an author. In one letter to Erbo, Engelhard described himself as a conduit that only transmitted what it received from others. “I have taken hold of a stream coming to me from the mouth of a spiritual man,” he told Erbo, “and

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I transport it without lessening it or polluting it with additions.”74 He used similar aqueous imagery toward the end of his story collection, claiming that a tale “poured forth” so eagerly that it “could not be restrained.”75 In both cases, Engelhard gave the tales agency and implied his role was only to record what he had heard. But after telling Erbo that he had neither diminished nor polluted his tale and that he had “affixed nothing to its purity,” Engelhard added, “this is allowed to writers, if I give analogies to things, if I suitably mingle the new with the old, if I mix water with the wood of Moses (Exodus 15:25), with the salt of Elijah (2 Kings 2:20), and even with the wine of Christ, not certainly with an intent to deceive but to increase the gift of sweetness. . . . I heard freely what was reported; I confess I loved the material, and I judged it worthy to be written as I wished and for me to arrange it well.”76 Engelhard’s admission that he digested, translated, and amplified his material contradicts his claim to be a conduit. He wanted to convey stories to a broader audience, but he also recognized that he reshaped what he had heard and made the tales his own. Engelhard’s reflections on his role as author echo the perspective of the compiler of the Collectaneum. Just as Engelhard claimed to be a conduit, so the preface to the Collectaneum had asserted that the book had no author since multiple monks had contributed to its composition.77 Both texts show a self-conscious interest in the role of an author and the ways in which existing material, whether written or oral, might be reused. Although relying on a preexisting tradition of oral storytelling, Engelhard constructed tales in his own voice, for his own reasons, and with his own vocabulary and distinctive style. In so doing, he created texts that transposed oral tales from within his monastery into a written form that connected people too distant from one another to regularly share stories through face to face contact. Engelhard provided more information about the context of his stories than most other Cistercian collectors. He recounted tales that circulated at the Cistercian Chapter General and that moved around the order with the movement of monks and abbots, but he also made clear that monks heard stories from one another and from their abbots during their daily chapter.78 Scheduled between mass and the period for manual work, chapter was one of the few times during the day when the monks could break their silence. In chapter, monks accused one another of faults, interceded for each other, punished one another, and made ritual displays of compassion to those whom they disciplined. They also heard moral lessons, exhortations, and sermons

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that taught them to recollect and transform memories of their experiences.79 The chapter’s combination of discipline, example, and compassion was integral to the Cistercians’ conception of monastic development, and it formed the monastic community into an externalized conscience.80 By giving the monks and nuns models to imitate or to avoid, and by teaching them to imagine connections between their own experiences and those of the stories’ protagonists, Engelhard’s stories participated in this process of formation without requiring a physical presence in Langheim’s chapter house. Engelhard was the only Cistercian story collector to preface his composition with a letter of dedication. This letter made his intended audience explicit. In sending his collection to the nuns of Wechterswinkel, Engelhard assumed nuns could use stories about monks for their own development. He explicitly noted that he intended the collection to assist the nuns just as the stories in chapter had helped the monks, telling the women that he hoped his book would “be useful to believers and to those wishing to make progress.”81 He made a similar point in his concluding apology, explaining, “I wrote this little book, in which the glory of God should be found, for the edification of the reader and the payment of a debt for the writer.” In fact, he wanted the nuns to be “persuaded of those things which are virtuous and worthy of imitation when they appear in others, and to exhibit those virtues in themselves, so that they grow in faith.” He remarked that he also added stories of “unworthy deeds, to show that their outcome is without honor, and indeed is horrible, so that those who are not provoked by good deeds to do good things may be recalled from evil through fear.”82 Repeatedly, Engelhard introduced or concluded his stories by insisting that they provided examples for imitation or material for admiration, and he reminded his audiences that tales depicting the punishment or dreadful deaths of bad Cistercians could also shape the development of those who heard them.83 Engelhard’s rhetorical style constructed an oral quality in his writings. His simple and straightforward prose gives his stories an immediacy that contrasts with Conrad of Eberbach’s ornate style. As Victoria Smirnova has pointed out, Caesarius of Heisterbach too wrote in a simple style that he consciously adopted to better communicate with his audience.84 Caesarius, however, set his characters in the past. Engelhard at times wrote in the present tense, and he used direct dialogue to bring his audience into the story. He seldom introduced his speakers, and he buried the dixit in the midst of a protagonist’s speech, perhaps assuming that the reader’s tone and expression

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would provide identification. By placing conversations in the first person rather than the third, he created a clear distinction between his protagonists’ voices and his own commentary, allowing himself and his audiences to know more than the characters themselves recognized. Engelhard’s written texts became oral in other ways as well. He wrote several of his compositions to be read aloud or performed. The Munich manuscript of Engelhard’s Vita Mathildis contains marginal notes that indicate the sections to be read as lessons during Vigils on Mechthild’s feast day. In the devotional work in honor of the Virgin Mary, narrative accounts of Mary’s life are interspersed with prayers, suggesting their recitation. The scribes of the Poznan´ manuscripts added accent marks over words to assist a reader’s pronunciation. The variant spellings of proper names in the different manuscripts indicate that the scribes spelled the names phonetically: they may have worked by hearing someone read a text aloud rather than from a written exemplar.85 At times, Engelhard acknowledged new technologies associated with writing. In the letter dedicating his prayers for the Virgin to the sponsa Christi “T,” Engelhard informed “T” that he planned to “separate the whole work into chapters.” This, he hoped, would “remove the tedium of reading, so that the weary can pause at the noted signs and more easily find the sections she wants.”86 But he then returned to the kind of intimacy that he thought oral communications could foster. His text, he told “T,” “is shaped around the character of Mary,” and he thought “T” should “bow to her as if she were present and speak to her as if face to face.” Despite his use of finding aids, he wanted his writings to create the personal connections that he associated with seeing and hearing rather than with reading. Engelhard’s works occupy a middle ground between the oral and face to face community of the chapter house and the literary compositions of authors who self-consciously recognized their archival sources. Even though he did not admit it, Engelhard created compositions that replaced his physical presence and the presence of his informants with writing. In the same way that Erbo thought he could find Engelhard’s character in his letters, so Engelhard wrote narratives that captured the character of people whom he thought nuns and monks should imitate. His stories maintained the process of learning through the example of others. In sharing texts with those distant from him, Engelhard crafted stories that preserved his monastic experiences and helped him share these experiences with people he could not see and who did not participate in Langheim’s daily chapter.

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Character, Witnesses, and the Problem of Veracity When the monks of Clairvaux asked Serlo of Wilton to corroborate the story of his conversion, Serlo neither confirmed nor denied its veracity. Instead, he emphasized its value as an exemplary tale. Serlo’s distinction between moral lessons and historical accuracy was precocious, anticipating the kind of contextually disconnected exemplum his own story became in the hands of the Dominicans. Engelhard, in comparison, resembled the monks of Clairvaux who sought Serlo’s confirmation. He expressed a concern about the truthfulness of his stories and the character of his informants. He asserted that he recorded tales that he had learned through seeing and hearing, and he insisted that they all could be verified. As he told the nuns of Wechterswinkel, “I wrote nothing for which I either did not give or could not give witnesses.”87 Repeatedly implying that others might question his accounts, he provided information about his sources and proclaimed that they were reliable. His efforts to confirm his stories borrowed elements from a new legal culture in the process of developing standards for verification and evidential proof. Yet he did not fully adopt these new standards either. He neither separated the historical from the exemplary nor firmly confirmed his tales using new criteria for verification. Ultimately, he returned to the tradition of relying on a knowledge of character and the consensus of his community to give his accounts authenticity. It is not surprising that an author writing about saints and holy monks in the last decade of the twelfth century should demonstrate an uncertainty about the ethical and epistemological implications of the endeavor. The process of saint-making was at that time in flux. Biographies of saints and stories of holy men had long intermingled historical knowledge with moral and didactic messages.88 Until the last third of the twelfth century, however, community consensus and local authorities generally created a saint, and communities recorded the miracles of their patron saints and commissioned saints’ lives for liturgical performance.89 The curia around Pope Alexander III (1159– 1181) began to bring the process of canonization under papal control.90 Still interested in promoting the imitation of saintly virtue, these juridically trained officials also wished to verify the signs of sanctity using either miracles or evidence of a holy life. Concerned in part about the possibility of diabolical deception, they asked for witnesses and started to require sworn depositions using the standards of evidential proof already developed in Italian notarial culture.91

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Engelhard knew of these developments. Certainly, the Cistercian order as a whole—especially the monks from Clairvaux, who struggled for over two decades to promote the canonization of Bernard of Clairvaux—experienced these new papal requirements.92 Closer to Langheim, the chapter of the bishop of Bamberg sought the canonization of the empress Kunigunde (d. 1040), and Innocent III’s bull of 1200, which contains important assertions about the pope’s power to create saints, noted that the abbots of Ebrach, Langheim, and Heilsbronn had been commissioned to investigate Kunigunde’s miracles.93 Engelhard himself wrote a vita, although his life of Mechthild does not seem to have been part of a dossier prepared for papal approval. In fact, Engelhard suspected his vita would not have meet the new standards for canonization. Not only did he apologize for the paucity of specific information in the life but his comment that those “knowledgeable about laws and decretals” were too busy to write implied that he recognized the legal culture of the curia and worried that his modest efforts might not be sufficient to make Mechthild a saint.94 Diplomatic and notarial conventions also may have influenced Engelhard’s interest in witnesses.95 As a monastic official—whether prior, cellarer, or abbot—he probably was involved in negotiations for property and in recording the transfers. By the early thirteenth century, sealed charters and notarized testimonies started to be trusted as authoritative documents. The process of sealing or notarization imprinted the document with the authority of its producers and made assessment of an informant’s character less important. In thirteenth-century Franconia, many charters, while sealed, also relied on witnesses who “saw and heard” either the ritual that enacted a transfer of property or the production of the charter describing the transfer.96 Traces of this diplomatic language in Engelhard’s stories suggest that he was aware of the continuing importance of witnessing procedures for authenticating and authorizing texts. Yet the characteristics of a reliable witness, whether for charters or for stories, remained unclear.97 At times, Engelhard’s sources were direct witnesses to the event that they related to him, but at other times, they were informants who retold tales that they had heard from supposedly reliable sources. Ultimately, Engelhard could not sustain his emphasis on witnesses. As much as he wanted his stories to record the behavior of real people, he relied on the moral character of his informants more than eyewitness testimony about actual events. For the most part, Engelhard kept his promise to the nuns of Wechterswinkel and affixed witnesses to his stories. Only one of his stories mentions

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neither a witness nor a location.98 But Engelhard tended to phrase his comments about his stories’ veracity with negative circumlocutions. Not only did he tell the nuns in his apology that he included witnesses for all his stories, but he also noted at the beginning of one account, “A few years ago, I ascertained this matter with not uncertain witnesses.”99 Similarly, at the end of another story, he commented, “I will not tell this without a witness,” but then he did not provide one.100 Other times, his witnesses are vague. Writing about an event at the monastery of Grandselve, for instance, he noted only that “there are many witnesses who say this happened.” At another time, he commented that “all of France” could attest for the actions of a Cistercian bishop, and in yet another instance, he asserted that a story he heard during “the year of his conversion” was “affirmed by witnesses so that it is not doubtful.”101 Despite his emphasis on witnesses, he could neither provide as many as he wished nor be particularly confident of their reliability. When Engelhard discussed his sources, he stated a preference for eyewitness testimony.102 In nearly a third of Engelhard’s accounts, he himself either figured in his story and served as its witness or claimed to know the protagonist personally.103 “I heard this from his own mouth,” Engelhard said about one informant. In another case, he wrote, “It happened in our house, and not one or two monks but the entire house exists to witness this.”104 Like the monks of Clairvaux, he also tried to confirm a story by speaking with its protagonist. When Erbo of Pru¨fening asked him to write about the “wondrous things” that had happened to Simon, abbot of Sorø, Engelhard told Erbo he first “desired to see the man and hear from his own mouth what had happened to him.” Only after encountering Simon at the Cistercian Chapter General, where Simon “did not deny the witnesses maintaining the truth,” did Engelhard record Simon’s terrifying vision and his resurrection from the dead.105 Yet Simon’s confirmation of his story was only marginally more satisfying than Serlo’s. Whereas Serlo had neither confirmed nor denied the tale of his life, Simon “did not deny” his story. Ultimately, Engelhard thought it was the witnesses who established “the truth” of Simon’s account. The negative constructions of Engelhard’s sentences reinforce the impression of an author anxious about the veracity of his account. Engelhard tried to distinguish witnesses from informants. Some of his witnesses (testes) actually observed an event, while others provided him with a story that they had heard from a source they considered reliable. Thus Engelhard learned one story from a Cistercian abbot who became bishop in Flanders, but the story was confirmed “not only by this man alone but by

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that entire house in which the matter happened.”106 Similarly, in another Cistercian monastery, “famous in France,” the entire monastery believed a story about a vision of the Virgin Mary, “because a man is witness to this with much evidence about what he had seen.”107 But it was a Langheim monk named Bezelin who brought the story back to Langheim. Bezelin provided Engelhard with four of his accounts; Engelhard commented about one that “this would seem unbelievable if our Bezelin and many others judged to be truthful men had not admitted what they had seen.”108 By distinguishing between those who actually experienced an event and those who told him the story, Engelhard implicitly recognized that his efforts at verification rested on the virtue and veracity of his informants. Yet he also understood that the good character of his informants could not fully corroborate their tales. In a letter to Erbo, he apologized that a story lacked good witnesses: “I undertake to tell a thing told to me, believed by me, pleasing in its miracle; if only it were confirmed with witnesses! I cannot give its witness, although hearsay nonetheless ascribes it to one man who, if he did tell it, would succeed in bringing the Medes and the Persians, the Greeks and the Barbarians, to the faith. Eberhard, bishop of Bamberg, it is said, when returning from Rome, brought it; he received it in the Italian Alps, in a monastery of the Cluniac order, whose name is unknown to me.”109 Only after Engelhard recounted the long tale did he return to discuss his source for the story, and only then does it become clear that he had heard it from a man who told it to him in German, who, Engelhard insisted, had not made it up.110 Engelhard’s introduction, however, associated it with Eberhard’s reputation for persuasive rhetoric in the hope this might assuage any uncertainty about its truth. Engelhard also worried that others might doubt what he had written or might even accuse him of lying. After recounting one story about an unpleasant event in a Cistercian monastery, he exclaimed, “would that I were lying! But I learned of this from a man whom, it seemed to me, there was no one more cautious or more truthful in speech.”111 In a letter to Erbo, he implied that these doubters were not merely imagined: “I write little things for you, honorable father as you have commanded; see, someone believes, someone recognizes that I am not a liar.”112 He even suggested that his own motives for writing could be questioned. He noted that he would not say much about the merits of Volmar, the man who had raised him, “lest I seem to lie out of love.”113 The anxious tone in Engelhard’s discussion of witnesses suggests he was aware of the problems of verification. Ultimately, he found it even more

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difficult to verify an actual event than to assert the good character of the person who transmitted the tales to him. Engelhard’s careful discussion of the transmission of his stories differentiated his accounts from those drawn from written sources. Certainly other Cistercian story collectors also wrote down tales they had heard orally, and they too listed their informants, but Engelhard was the only story collector to insist that none of his tales came from written materials. Written sources effaced their contact with witnesses and informants and lost the possibility of verifying the character of their informants; they bridged distances without personal contact. Engelhard, in comparison, linked the oral transmission of his stories to his efforts to verify them. Contact with an informant helped him assess character, the reliability of a communal affirmation, and a chain of transmission. The oral sources for Engelhard’s tales mirrored the face to face character of his community and reinforced it. His stories assumed that the fraternal care and correction still formed an essential component of Cistercian life, and their reliability depended on Engelhard’s emphasis on a community in which he knew the character of its members.

Conclusion Engelhard’s collection of stories did not remain within a single abbey, nor even within the Cistercian order. He dedicated his collection to Cistercian nuns and shared his stories with male friends from outside his order. Other Cistercian communities in German-speaking lands copied his texts. Engelhard wrote to bridge distances and to preserve memories, and he expected that these tales could substitute for the teaching and example of those who were physically present to one another. His experiments with mimetic texts relied on an increased use of documentation, on a sophisticated sense of the author, and on new legal ideas about evidence and proof. At the same time, Engelhard consciously drew on qualities of oral communication to fashion his stories so that they preserved the intimate characteristics of a face to face community. His anxiety about the quantity and nature of his witnesses, his worry about the character of his messengers, and his concern about accusations of mendacity reflect his efforts to adjust to new institutional and legal developments while maintaining important elements of an older face to face society. Ultimately, he depended on the consensus of his community and the character of his witnesses to confirm

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his stories. Engelhard was not fully conservative, ignoring juridical and documentary developments, but neither was he fully able to embrace and maintain new textual practices. In oscillating between oral and textual qualities, his written communications show a man struggling with the ethical and epistemological consequences of a society in change.

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Engelhard heard, but his protagonists saw. Engelhard listened to the stories other monks told him, but he wrote about dreams and visionary experiences. By recording Cistercian stories, he preserved memories and encouraged his audiences to imagine the presence of those separated by distance and time. By recounting dreams and visions, he created imagined connections between an invisible world associated with the divine and a sensible world of material beings, bodies, and things. He introduced his collection for the nuns by considering the oppositions between the ways things appeared on earth and their reality in heaven, and he posited that the “visible signs” that his stories provided could bridge the gaps between perception and reality. He explained to the nuns that he hoped his accounts of these signs could assuage doubts and encourage faith in those who received his tales. Engelhard never explicitly defined what he meant by visible signs. Nor did he define faith. Writing from a monastery in Franconia, he was intellectually and geographically distant from the emerging schools of northern France and a scholarly interest in definition and logical argument. His stories, however, consider questions about vision, signs, and forms of knowledge that scholastic theologians also debated.1 Engelhard did not embrace sight as an entirely reliable form of knowledge, but neither did he insist that faith developed from a confidence in the unseen. His writings demonstrate his reliance on an Augustinian epistemology that he modified by incorporating into his stories twelfth-century explorations into the nature of vision. A confluence of developments suggests the importance of the period around 1200 for the history of the visual. Christian authors had long invoked biblical passages to present seeing as a metaphor for understanding, but over

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the course of the twelfth century, people started to employ new texts and new techniques to explore the relation between vision on earth and vision in heaven. By the turn of the century, a confidence that visible material could provide a path toward the invisible divine emerged in multiple forms. The flourishing of mystical experiences depicted in visual images, an emphasis on seeing the Eucharist, the creation of naturalistic Gothic styles, and the intellectual assimilation of Greek medical texts, natural philosophy, and pseudo-Dionysian theology all provide evidence for a new interest in sight.2 Intertwined with a reconceptualization of vision was an epistemological shift that reinterpreted the knowledge of signs and their referents. Often presented as the transition from an Augustinian contemplation to an Aristotelian emphasis on logical propositions and sensory perception, this epistemological change had ethical implications. It gradually loosened Augustine’s association of knowledge with spiritual growth, and it transformed conceptions of sacrament so that sacramental signs no longer just signified grace but also conveyed it.3 This transition also changed the ways people understood faith. Around the year 1100, faith seemed a precondition for understanding, but by the mid-thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas defined it as an assent to propositions that could exist “midway between knowledge and opinion.”4 These transitions were neither quick nor all-encompassing.5 Throughout the twelfth century, scholars investigated the nature of signs and sacraments and considered how sight might link body to soul, reform the self, impart knowledge, and encourage faith. Engelhard’s ideas about vision, especially when placed in conjunction with the ideas of his monastic contemporaries, show that late twelfth-century monasteries remained places for investigating the relationship between faith, sensory knowledge, rational thought, and spiritual growth. Cistercian storytellers did not accept the methods and arguments of their scholastic contemporaries, but they did not develop a consistent monastic opposition either. Instead, they spoke with multiple voices. Although authors sometimes created inconsistencies and confusions within a single text, in general the Cistercians’ understanding of the relation of vision to faith changed over time. Late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century authors drew on ideas expressed by earlier Cistercian theologians, especially Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St. Thierry, but some of them also modified the positions of their monastic predecessors and incorporated scholastic ideas even if not scholastic methods. When Engelhard discussed the visible signs of the Eucharist at the start of his collection, he set the theme for the stories that follow. His work focuses

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more explicitly on questions of vision and faith than do the compositions of other Cistercian storytellers. Although expressing epistemological and ethical questions in narrative form, his tales demonstrate his assumptions about the nature and function of signs and their interactions with their interpreters. Yet Engelhard seldom mentioned the authors who influenced him. He clearly had access to a library, for he copied a dossier of materials that supported his devotional composition in honor of the Virgin Mary, including a large portion of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, a letter by Gerhoh of Reichersberg, and Gerhoh’s translation of John of Arezzo’s Greek sermon on the Assumption.6 Nonetheless, repeated fires at Langheim destroyed most of the evidence for the works that Engelhard might have read. One surviving thirteenth-century volume contains excerpts from the writings of Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Hugh of St. Victor, texts that would have been common in Cistercian monasteries.7 In fact, in his compositions, Engelhard paraphrased Augustine of Hippo and Bernard of Clairvaux, considered issues explored by William of St. Thierry, and articulated ideas about sight, sacrament, and faith that echo the writings of Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141). Hugh’s efforts to integrate monastic moral development with scholastic questions made his ideas attractive to late twelfth-century monks such as Engelhard who wished to maintain an Augustinian outlook. His ideas about vision and sacrament support Engelhard’s conception of “visible signs” by demonstrating the sacramental possibilities of everyday objects and actions. This chapter places Engelhard’s ideas about vision and faith in conversation with those of Augustine of Hippo, Bernard of Clairvaux, William of St. Thierry, Hugh of St. Victor, and the other Cistercian storytellers in order to tease out the authors who might have influenced him. In offering his stories as “visible signs,” Engelhard was neither as uneasy about the relation of vision to faith as some of his Cistercian contemporaries nor as confident that vision could enhance faith as Caesarius of Heisterbach had become by the second decade of the thirteenth century. Instead, like Hugh of St. Victor, Engelhard articulated ways in which vision linked the material to the immaterial and contributed to the development of faith.

Augustinian Foundations Engelhard introduced his collection of stories with a long description of the Eucharist in which he considered the relationship of sight and belief. “In the

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sacraments of the holy altar,” he stated, “we view one thing and believe another. What seems one way is another, appearing as terrestrial bread from earth but existing as celestial bread from heaven.”8 In fact, he affirmed, “there is more in this thing [re] than you see, something to believe that is different from what you see; indeed there is that thing [id] to believe which you do not see in any way.” He even thought he could demonstrate the nature of the unseen sacrament by making an analogy with things at a distance. “Let me prove this,” he wrote, offering both eternal life and the existence of Rome as examples. Still, he admitted, the Eucharist might seem different, for “it is hard to look at bread made by human hands, bound together out of wheat and cooked in fire and believe it is the body of Christ. Nonetheless, according to Christ’s teaching, it is Christ’s body.” Continuing with this language of proof and verification, he asserted, “There are innumerable witnesses to this and they are very credible, and even more, they are confirmed from above by visible signs.” In conclusion, Engelhard connected “visible signs” to the stories in his collection and to his assumed audience. “Among us,” he proclaimed of his Cistercian community, “we have not been lacking such signs. They display themselves through sight to those who are tempted by doubts in such things. To those who are watchful and observant, they show themselves in that appearance by which they are believed.” Engelhard’s introduction paraphrases Augustine of Hippo’s sermon on the Eucharist that Augustine addressed to newly baptized Christians. Engelhard’s rephrasing of Augustine’s composition signals both his dependence on Augustine and his modification of Augustine’s ideas. Engelhard’s oppositions follow Augustine’s. Augustine too explained the appearance of bread and wine of the sacrament by remarking that “in them one thing is seen, [and] another is to be understood. What can be seen has a bodily appearance, what is to be understood provides spiritual fruit.”9 As Engelhard did later, Augustine moved from the properties of the Eucharist to the manufacture of its elements, describing how grains are ground together, leavened, and baked into bread, and how the juice from clusters of grapes mingle to become wine. Augustine did not explicate the transformation but thought it a “sacramental mystery.” Nor did he linger over the contrast between appearance and reality. Instead, he described the grains and grapes used to form the bread and wine, interpreted their variety as signifying the multiplicity of Christians unified into a single community, and called on the power of a merciful God to drive away evil thoughts and deepen the faith of his congregants.10 Augustine bequeathed to medieval theologians a vocabulary, an epistemology, and an

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anthropology that supported the process of spiritual formation as the path toward knowledge. For Engelhard, Augustine’s emphasis on the subjective element involved in understanding signs remained essential, but he transposed Augustine’s sociological description of the community of the Church into an epistemological consideration about the relation of vision to knowledge. His modifications suggest that he read Augustine’s ideas about sign and sacrament through a matrix of monastic assumptions about spiritual and moral reformation and in the context of twelfth-century developments in sacramental theology. Augustine’s ideas about language, signs, and knowledge provided a foundation for the twelfth-century monastic theologians who influenced Engelhard. Steeped in classical rhetoric, Augustine explored the ways language communicated a knowledge of God. His understanding of signs intertwined with his discussion of the relation between human words and the divine Word and the processes by which humans could ascertain some knowledge of God.11 As a result, his interest in signs was primarily linguistic and always ethical. He borrowed from Aristotle, probably by way of Cicero, a conception of signs as inferential and as capable of accurately signifying their objects, but he transposed these ideas inward so that understanding the object from its sign depended on the spiritual state of the interpreter.12 Augustine’s oft-quoted definition of a sign as a thing that “causes something else to come into the mind as a consequence of itself” articulates this triadic interaction.13 Yet, as Robert Markus argues, the relationship of the sign to the signified also depends on whether the person interpreting the sign is hearing or speaking.14 In De doctrina christiana, Augustine considered the process of hearing and interpreting Scripture and proposed that linguistic signs (signa propria) are social conventions that have no ontological relation with the thing they signify. But when Augustine turned to the perspective of the speaker, he developed a concept of “word” that is not a vocal sound but rather an idea that the mind creates from what it already knows and can possess a likeness to the thing it signifies. Augustine’s overarching question was how signs could bring to mind a knowledge of God. Here, his semiotics intertwined with epistemology, psychology, and moral development. The ability to formulate knowledge and to speak with a redeemed language depended on a person’s spiritual condition. Augustine started with the idea that humans were created in the image and likeness of God. Human sinfulness obscures this likeness, but the divine image remains in the soul, even if at times latent and unrecognized. Augustine’s tripartite division of the soul corresponds with his triune God: the

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memory, the intellect, and the will together contain the divine image and can cooperate in efforts to restore a divine likeness. Only in Christ can sign and thing, word and flesh, become identical and possess a complete resemblance to God. Yet Christ’s Incarnation made possible the restoration of a divine likeness in humanity, not as an identity with God but as a divine gift that allowed participation in his nature.15 In his Confessions, Augustine explored this process of restoration on a personal scale. There he described his own movement from sterile rhetoric to redeemed speech, from finding in the Bible only a collection of immoral stories to discovering in it the source of truth. As he meditated on the infusion of grace that allowed him to explore himself and recollect his experiences, he recognized in the enigma that was his soul a sign that represented God, and he realized he could use the verbal signs of human speech as a medium to express God’s Word.16 Augustine’s ideas about vision, like his understanding of signs, provided fundamental concepts that later medieval authors used and modified. In considering vision, Augustine again stressed the unreliable qualities of sensible knowledge, the importance of a person’s movement toward God, and the process of interpretation. His medieval readers inherited his inconsistent vocabulary and his ambiguous set of concepts. In both On the Trinity and the Confessions, Augustine distinguished between the “eye of the body” and the “eye of the mind,” and he suggested that the bodily senses provide knowledge that is often wrong or deceptive but that the eye of the mind can locate truth.17 His Literal Interpretation of Genesis, in comparison, distinguished between corporeal, intellectual, and spiritual visions, but it also presented these types as a spectrum by which each kind of vision is interpreted by the form of vision higher than it.18 In corporeal vision, the eyes view visible objects, but such physical sight is often unreliable. With spiritual sight, the spirit perceives images and likenesses of thing but still can be deceived, as in dreams or hallucinations. Like the categories of visio and somnium developed by his near contemporary, Macrobius, Augustine’s spiritual sight described an intermediate realm between the divine and the mundane and between truth and fiction.19 Neither predictably true nor inevitably false, these middle categories required discernment and interpretation, and their reliability depended on the spiritual state of those interpreting them. Only intellectual sight could not err. As vision by the mind, intellectual sight provides an understanding of realities that “are neither bodies nor the likenesses of bodies” but are essences or ideas.

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Despite Augustine’s separation of intellectual sight from the unreliable forms of corporeal and spiritual sight, monastic authors found in Augustine’s works the possibility that the physical process of seeing could model a spiritual vision of God.20 They often read Augustine in conjunction with the works of Gregory the Great. Whereas Augustine’s signs were opaque, often hiding rather than revealing their meaning, Gregory thought that words, created things, and the actions of humans could illuminate the nature of their Creator and link this world to the next.21 Gregory incorporated into Augustine’s theology of grace ideas about ascetic practice and human repentance drawn from John Cassian, and his Dialogues offer numerous signs— especially the miracles of holy men—that demonstrate the possibility of divine presence on earth. As one of the earliest texts copied in early Cistercian scriptoria, the Dialogues provide a theological underpinning and a model for the Cistercians’ later collections of monastic stories and visions. Engelhard did not explicitly acknowledge his debt to Augustine, but his ideas rest on this Augustinian foundation. The central concern for monks such as Engelhard was human reformation rather than intellectual understanding. Augustine’s stress on the ethical components of knowledge remained fundamental. Yet, by offering his audience “visible signs” that he hoped would confirm things that were hard to believe, Engelhard moved away from Augustine’s unanalyzed acceptance of “sacramental mysteries,” and he modified Augustine’s conception of signs and corporeal vision. He reused Augustine’s sermon on the Eucharist but he also invoked ideas from eleventh- and twelfth-century debates over the nature of signs, sacraments, and the reliability of sight that adapted Augustine’s ideas in response to new intellectual questions.

Typologies of Seeing Engelhard’s stories drew on a monastic tradition that incorporated Augustine’s semiotics and ethics but modified Augustine’s ideas about sight. Many medieval readers encountered Augustine’s typologies of sight through collections of florilegia that contained only parts of Augustine’s analysis. As a result, they used Augustine’s terminiology but not his presentation of vision as an interpretative spectrum.22 Furthermore, as many scholars have pointed out, most forms of visionary experiences, whether dreams or waking experiences, fall under the category of “spiritual seeing” that does not easily distinguish

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true visions from deceptions. As a result, Engelhard and his contemporaries relied on Augustine’s conception of signs and his typologies for visions, but they also investigated whether his terms applied to the visionary experiences they described. As well as combining Augustine’s ideas about vision with the perspective of Gregory the Great, Engelhard and the other Cistercian storytellers also were influenced by a century of debate over the nature of the Eucharist. Late eleventh- and early twelfth-century scholars devoted much effort to defining and explaining sacramental signs, seeking to understand intellectually what had long been expressed through ritual and liturgical practice, and asking whether Augustine’s linguistic semiotics could be applied to material signs as well as to verbal ones.23 New forms of eucharistic devotion emphasized the importance of seeing the consecrated bread and wine and encouraged an interest in materiality. By the twelfth century, people illuminated the consecrated host on the altar with perpetually burning lights and prayed before the reserved Eucharist. Priests elevated the host either during or after its consecration, often with church bells ringing at the moment of transformation, and stories of eucharistic miracles and visions proliferated. Some twelfth-century churches even displayed miracle hosts so that they could be seen by the congregation.24 Both the eucharistic debates and these new devotional practices relied on the corporeal senses for understanding sacramental signs, and they modified Augustine’s ideas. The stories recounted in the Cistercian story collections depict sensory experiences. Although most Cistercian authors called their tales miracles and visions, these miracles and visions offer neither first-person accounts of mystical rapture nor instances of miraculous healing and protection at a saint’s shrine.25 Rather, they are third-person accounts that describe a protagonist’s personal experience.26 Even when they show a monk in contemplation, they place the encounter in a physical environment. Their protagonists see Mary walking in their fields, they view babies on an altar, and they encounter snakes in a money box; they smell flowers, feel the touch of Jesus, hear the voices of the recently deceased, and taste honey in the host. The stories depict dreams, saintly and demonic apparitions, and heavenly journeys, including visions of the divine. At times, they show miraculous changes in everyday objects, whether bleeding hosts, moving crucifixes, or dissolving chains. Although their protagonists are often historical figures who appear in other documents as well as these stories, these accounts are literary constructions that are less concerned with providing

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evidence for historical events than with exploring the nature of sight and the interpretation of signs.27 Some Cistercian storytellers incorporated Augustine’s tripartite categories of sight into their tales, but their use of an Augustinian terminology only partially explained the visions they described. Although dreams and visions fell into Augustine’s second category of “spiritual sight” in which the soul’s perception was at times reliable and at times deceptive, the Cistercians’ stories presented tangible and sensible elements that seemed to confirm a vision’s veracity. For example, the anonymous author of the Collectaneum recounted a story of a dead monk who appeared to a sacristan to make amends for a psalter he had lost. The second time the ghost appeared, he handed the sacristan the missing volume. “Wishing to test whether he had a true body that seemed to assist him,” the sacristan poked the apparition with a stick and found it a shadow. The author concluded that this story helped answer Augustine’s questions as to whether a soul after death still had a body and whether such a body could be perceived through spiritual vision.28 Yet, even if the ghost appeared “in spirit,” the book, which materialized in the sacristan’s hands, remained a corporeal object that the ghost could carry and the living man could see and feel.29 Engelhard too recognized Augustine’s typology of vision, but he did not employ categories systematically. Eighteen of the tales in his collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel depict visions and apparitions, and many of the stories embedded in his letters do as well. Nine of these eighteen start by describing the protagonist as seeing (vidit). In three others, Engelhard called an event a vision as he concluded the tale.30 At times he made distinctions between kinds of visions. He separated dreams from waking visions, noting whether someone had a vision while asleep (vidit in somnis), but he did not think waking visions any more or less reliable than dreams. In fact, one protagonist saw the same vision twice, once while asleep and again while awake.31 Twice, Engelhard mentioned that a protagonist saw “in spirit” (in spiritu), a term that he used to refer to visions of noncorporeal things. In one, the visionary himself was “in the spirit,” filled with grace because of his role serving others; he saw the assembled monks and laybrothers as kings before God. Another monk saw “in spirit” the interiorized struggle that one of his brothers endured.32 The clearest distinction Engelhard made in his terminology was between earthly and heavenly experiences. In the few cases in which a vision transported a protagonist to heaven, whether through a dream or a near-death experience, Engelhard avoided the language of sight and instead

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presented these experiences as revelations in which something appeared (apparat or revelat).33 Engelhard emphasized the importance of physical sight more than did Augustine. He did not offer accounts in which visionaries experienced a mystical encounter with the divine through a beatific vision but instead recounted tales with decidedly sensory qualities, in which his protagonists saw, smelled, felt, and heard. Repeatedly, Engelhard described moments in which heavenly figures came to earth, but the signs they enacted always required interpretation. This emphasis on physical vision and on the importance of interpretation becomes especially apparent at the moments when his interpretation of signs breaks down. In the collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel, Engelhard usually described a visible sign and modeled how to interpret it. In some of his other stories, however, he had difficulty providing both the vision and the interpretation. This is especially noticeable in the tale of Simon of Sorø’s resurrection from the dead that Engelhard included in a letter to Erbo of Pru¨fening. Erbo had asked Engelhard to tell the story, but Engelhard refused to do so until he had heard Simon himself confirm it at the yearly Chapter General.34 In his account, Engelhard reproduced the environment of the Chapter General by including the interjections and comments of the abbots as they tried to make sense of Simon’s visions; he also included his own asides and noted his own confusions. His story shows his desire to understand the nature of Simon’s experiences—a desire that he shared with the abbots in Chapter—but it also demonstrates the difficulty in finding a clear definition that described what Simon saw. According to Engelhard, Simon of Sorø lived as the master of a school in a Danish house of regular canons until his horrifying visions convinced him to become a Cistercian monk.35 His visions began after a bloodletting, when Simon ran a fever. First, Simon saw a woman he once knew; she tried to lure him from his community to ride with her companions. As an experience provoked by Simon’s illness, it was the sort of dream or hallucination that Augustine thought usually unreliable. But neither Engelhard nor Simon questioned it, and they instead described physical characteristics that confirmed its veracity. When Simon refused to join the woman, she thrust her finger into the wound from bloodletting, and Simon’s arm grew so inflamed that he became mortally ill. Simon experienced his second vision on his deathbed. A column of smoke rose from the foot of his bed and supported the Virgin Mary, who appeared as the Queen of Heaven on her throne. The brothers who prayed

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at Simon’s bedside heard Simon speaking to Mary in Latin, but they could not see her or hear what she said. Mary showed Simon numerous signs but she interpreted only some of them. One demonstrated that Simon need not worry about the disruptions of a drunken brother who mangled the prayers said at Simon’s bedside. Mary produced a dish of mud, which she stirred with an onion stalk to produce a fetid smoke. This, she said, signified the worthlessness of the brother’s prayers. The vision confused Engelhard, for he interrupted his story to note that he did not know where the dish of mud had come from. Mary then showed Simon a second dish, empty and black inside and out. She provided no explanation but Simon knew its meaning nonetheless. He told the assembled abbots, “I understood that my life was designated by this dish, as it was sterile and foolish and soot-black with sins, except for those things which, however small, I retained though my veneration and desire for the blessed Mary, glorious Virgin Mother of God.”36 Mary ordered him to place the dish on a table. Again, Mary did not explain the action, but Simon recognized that it meant he should leave the regular canons and become a Cistercian monk. Finally, Mary told Simon that he would die the next day, later become reconciled with his bishop, and in fourteen days would leave his community. This prophecy puzzled him. While thinking about it, another beautiful and dignified woman appeared and offered him whatever he wished. Mary warned him to ignore this new woman, “for she will say nothing that is good for you.” In fact, as soon as Mary spoke, the new woman’s head appeared covered in mange and she disappeared.37 Simon explained his third vision as a vision of his rational soul. As Mary predicted, he died, and he did so before he could take last rites. A multitude of demons came into his chamber to carry him away. Engelhard interjected that an abbot at the Chapter General, curious about the physicality of this description, asked how the demons had entered the room. Simon explained that he could no longer see with his carnal eyes but instead saw with his rational spirit and could recognize that demons had entered his soul.38 As they began to tear him to pieces, Simon also sensed a splendid and terrible presence that banished the demons and regarded Simon with an expression and a silence as terrible as the demons’ torments. Although Simon lay in pain and grief, he thought this presence was Mary. A puzzled abbot interrupted Simon again, curious how his rational soul knew that Mary was present and not the Lord. “This is difficult to say,” Engelhard reported Simon as saying. “The rational soul is a simple thing, for which seeing, hearing, and being are not separate but are one and the same [quantum ad substantiam].” Engelhard

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did not find this answer satisfying, commenting that “although this man was skilled in his literacy, he was not expert in rhetorical speculation.”39 But Engelhard could not explain how the vision crossed between spiritual and corporeal sensing. The apparition touched Simon’s cheek and told him to rise, at which point Simon, who had been dead for the better part of a day, returned to life. Simon’s final vision was corporeal. Although Mary had revived him, Simon did not immediately leave to join the Cistercians but instead retreated into his chamber for reflection. As soon as he did, two enormous men burst in his room. They blew into his ears with “two horns of the kind used to feed food to little ones when the breasts have dried up.”40 These giants tortured Simon until his head felt ready to explode. Before they departed, they chained Simon to his bed. Simon called upon Mary for help, asking her to dissolve his bonds and promising that he would immediately join the Cistercians. The chains dropped off and he prepared to leave his community. Eventually, he even reconciled with the bishop and departed fourteen days later, just as Mary had foretold. For the rest of his life, he had a terrified face, dazed eyes, and a body whose motions were limp. Just as the oozing wound in Engelhard’s story of the two necromancers offered a corporeal sign signifying the reality of hell, so Simon’s visible appearance signified the torments of the afterlife and the assistance Mary had provided. As Simon’s story shows, Engelhard and his fellow abbots had categories with which to understand visionary experiences, but these categories did not always clearly correspond to the visionaries’ reports. In fact, Simon’s account had dream-like qualities that made it disjointed and hard to understand, but each vision had physical and sensory components that seemed to confirm its veracity. The first woman thrust her fingers into Simon’s wound; Mary produced a stench from the basin of mud, touched Simon’s cheek, and released his chains; the giants blew in his ears; and Simon’s experiences marked his body. Engelhard and the abbots at Chapter General sought to understand these visions using theories about the perceptive powers of the soul, but they could not apply to Simon’s story the ideas that they invoked. Furthermore, Simon’s story offered signs that Engelhard could not interpret. Engelhard did not understand where the mud-filled vessel came from, nor could he explain the mangy-headed woman or the trumpets in Simon’s ears. At moments, Simon knew how to interpret a sign even if Engelhard did not. Simon recognized and articulated the meaning of the soot-covered dish and the table, and his rational spirit could see within himself the demons

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who tormented his soul and the love for Mary that saved him. Yet none of these visible signs displayed their meaning without ambiguity. As visons of warning and reproach, they depended on the part of Simon’s soul that still loved Mary, and they taught his soul to clean itself and to recognize what, on some level, Simon already knew: that he should abandon temptation, leave the community of regular canons, and become a Cistercian monk. The tale of Simon of Sorø demonstrates Engelhard’s efforts to place sensory visions within Augustinian categories of vision. Like the abbots who wished to understand how Simon could sense the demons and the presence of Mary, and like the sacristan in Herbert’s tale who wished to understand how a spiritual ghost might carry a physical book, Engelhard recognized the difficulty of reconciling Augustine’s suspicion of the senses with his own interest in corporeal sight. Simon’s narration and confusions constrained Engelhard’s account, and he did not reconstruct the tale to make it easier to provide his own interpretation of Simon’s experiences. In his stories for the nuns, in comparison, he combined visions with their explanations, modeling the process of interpretation for his audiences. He stressed the importance of seeing but not seeing too directly, for he thought the meaning of the signs depended on the ethical response of their viewers rather than on any intrinsic meaning embedded in the signs themselves.

Faith, Sight, and Doubt Engelhard was not the only Cistercian author who explored the relations between sight, knowledge, and faith. The interjections of the abbots at the Cistercian Chapter General as they heard Simon of Sorø’s story suggest these abbots were also interested in understanding forms of sight and the kinds of knowledge that vision could impart. Such questions emerge in other collections of Cistercian stories as well. These stories illuminate the changing perspectives about vision that Cistercian authors developed over time. At times, a single work could display multiple positions, but the collections also show a gradual transition from a twelfth-century suspicion of sight to Caesarius of Heisterbach’s thirteenth-century confidence that seeing could renew faith. The authors of the twelfth-century collections from Clairvaux and its affiliates drew on oppositions between sight and faith that Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St. Thierry had developed in opposition to Peter Abelard and

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the urban schools, and they articulate a monastic position about faith and sight that later Cistercians modified.

Doubt and Community Support The Cistercians’ stories describing doubts about the transformation of the Eucharist are especially illustrative of the monks’ changing positions about vision and faith.41 The earliest Cistercian story collection, the Collectaneum, includes stories drawn from non-Cistercian sources as well as stories about Cistercian monks. Its compliers assumed that these tales would be of interest to a Cistercian audience even if they did not depict Cistercian monks. In its eight stories that describe doubts about the Eucharist, the Collectaneum creates a clear distinction between Cistercian and non-Cistercian protagonists. The stories divide evenly—four tales concern Cistercian monks and four originate outside the Cistercian order—but they demonstrate different positions about the role of visions and sight. The four non-Cistercian stories describe visions in which a person saw the host transform into flesh or a child, and they use sight to confirm the presence of Christ in the sacrament.42 The four stories with Cistercian protagonists, in comparison, focus on the spiritual state of the protagonist.43 In these accounts, the monks’ doubts caused despair and made them ill, and they were cured not by visions but by the faith and the prayers of the community and its abbots. The Collectaneum’s Cistercian stories present doubt more as crisis of conscience than as a problem of cognition. In one Cistercian story, Bernard of Clairvaux learned that a monk in despair doubted the Eucharist. He told the doubting monk to receive the host with Bernard’s faith, and the monk eventually developed his own.44 In another tale, a dying brother despaired of salvation and refused last rites until another monk brought him a crucifix and prayed with him.45 In yet another, a monk who doubted the Eucharist was restored to faith through the prayers of his brothers; only then, as a reward, did he see the host take the form of a child and the wine become blood.46 Finally, the Collectaneum recounts a story about Goswin, an abbot of Foigny who retired to Clairvaux. Once at Clairvaux, the devil tormented him and he began to doubt. Only after Goswin returned to Foigny and was surrounded by the faith of his brothers did he regain his spiritual health.47 These four tales depict the importance of communal support and communal expressions of faith, and they insist that it was the community’s collective

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faith, not the knowledge imparted by a vision, that cured the monks’ doubts. The Collectaneum’s non-Cistercian stories depicting visions of eucharistic transformation, however, suggest that some of the collection’s authors may already have been interested in visible evidence for the Real Presence but that they thought the special nature of the Cistercian community made such visions unnecessary for Cistercian monks. Conrad of Eberbach’s rewriting and elaboration of Cistercian stories in his Exordium magnum makes the special nature of the Cistercian community explicit. In keeping with a collection that celebrated Cistercian holiness, Conrad told few stories about monks with doubts, but when he did, visions provided no assistance. Conrad reworked some of the stories from the Collectaneum to make their theological and didactic messages clear. He rewrote the tale about abbot Goswin, shaping it into a lesson about faith and reason. According to Conrad, the devil not only tempted Goswin, as the Collectaneum suggests, but he also encouraged Goswin to doubt what he could understand with his reason. In fact, Conrad insisted that, by questioning the Real Presence, Goswin adopted the heresy of Berengar of Tours. Conrad quoted Bernard of Clairvaux, who accused reason of “breaking and entering” when it intruded on matters of faith, and he cited Gregory the Great, who preached that faith had no merit in circumstances when human reason could provide proof. He even accused Goswin of desiring to “gaze with an open face” on that which should be understood by faith, and he ultimately turned to the Epistle to the Hebrews on the nature of faith, reminding his readers that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” and asking, with the words of Paul in Romans 8:24, “who hopes for what is seen?”48 As in the Collectaneum, Goswin regained his health and faith when he returned to Foigny, but Conrad’s elaborations make it into a story about the presumption of reason more than one about the care a monastic community could provide. In a second tale, Conrad transformed one of Herbert of Clairvaux’s stories to demonstrate that nonsensory and intellectual visions should be the apex of a monk’s spiritual development.49 Herbert had recorded the visions of a monastic friend who had told him privately about his experiences. Two visions convinced this friend to become a monk. Later visions revealed sensory apparitions in which he saw and touched Jesus, Mary, saints, and angels, smelled sweet fragrances, and heard angelic song. Eventually, the monk had a vision of the Trinity, but he never described to Herbert what he had seen. Herbert told others of these experiences only after his friend’s death, so that

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they would comfort himself and others.50 Conrad, however, reworked Herbert’s tale to connect the monk’s visions to Augustinian categories, and he made explicit the ascent to an imageless vision that Herbert’s account only implied. The young man progressed from initial dreams that convinced him to convert, through sensed visions of a human Christ, to an intellectual vision of God about which he could not speak.51 His experience of the Trinity became the culmination of a path from purgative to illuminative to unitive vision for, “after having viewed with his eyes the sweet humanity of our Lord Christ, he was admitted by the wondrous esteem of the grace of God to contemplate the eternal mystery of the indivisible Trinity, to the extent it is possible for a human still enveloped in mortal flesh.”52 Whereas Herbert did not know how to describe what his friend had seen, Conrad was confident that the monk saw the Trinity with “the eyes of his intellect.” Furthermore, Conrad used this vision to critique scholastic investigations, claiming that unlike schoolmen, the monk “did not probe this mystery, or eagerly force this secret undertaking of faith” but rather meditated on God’s incomprehensible majesty.53 For Conrad, the progression illuminated the spiritual development possible in Cistercian life, in opposition to the education that the monk abandoned. Whereas Herbert offered a story for his own consolation and that of his friends, Conrad instead provided a lesson on the nature of vision and the dangers of the schools.

To Walk by Faith Not Sight Conrad’s hostility to the schools and his emphasis on an opposition between faith and reason placed in narrative form ideas that Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St. Thierry had articulated, especially when they reacted to the ideas and methods of Peter Abelard. Abelard attracted students through his provocative style, his intellectual questioning, and his confidence in the human capacity to reason. He also challenged elements of the Augustinian legacy so important to monastic theologians. In his attack on universals, Abelard criticized the idea that the human mind contained within it divinely established categories and powers that connected verbal signs, mental concepts, and things. He instead distinguished between vocal words and mental images, and he advocated a form of knowing in which a mind abstracted a concept from a thing and vocalized it with a word, leaving it provisional as to whether the human mind on earth

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could come to a knowledge of divine things.54 In applying the Greek term theologica to describe his rational efforts to understand the nature of God, Abelard emphasized the importance of questioning and doubt as steps leading toward intellectual understanding. Both Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St. Thierry articulated ideas about sight, faith, and doubt in response to Abelard’s teachings. In contrasting Abelard’s intellectual knowledge with the truth that is sought through faith, Bernard could not separate Abelard’s character from his philosophy. In a letter to Hugh of St. Victor, written around 1127, Bernard expressed his distaste for the ideas and methods of an unnamed scholar often assumed to be Abelard. This man, Bernard wrote, “is a new discoverer of unusual assertions and asserter of new discoveries” who “blithely scatters his frenzied ideas in the ears of the foolish.”55 Bernard also made clear his dislike of the emerging scholastic method. “The sacrament of highest God is for receiving, not discussing, for veneration, not adjudicating,” he told Hugh, and he quoted the apostle Paul, that “faith comes from hearing.”56 Bernard’s later language about Abelard is even more dramatic. In a set of letters designed to mobilize his allies in anticipation of the Council of Sens in 1140, Bernard claimed that Abelard “argues about the faith against the faith; he attacks the law with the words of the law. He sees nothing through a mirror and in mystery but regards everything face to face, parading among the great and among wonders that are above him.”57 For Bernard, the distinction between the clarity of sight in heaven and the obscurity of sight on earth was fundamental. He argued that monks should walk by faith, not sight, and he defined faith in terms of truth, not knowledge, as a “voluntary and certain foretaste of truth not yet apparent.”58 He famously criticized the distracting quality of artistic images in monasteries, and he told students in Paris that the eyes are the “windows of death” that led the soul away from God.59 Yet when writing in a less polemical fashion to those shaped by monastic life, Bernard was more optimistic about the potential of sight, exploring the moments when the chasm between earthly and heavenly things could be bridged.60 In these monastic writings, Bernard did not describe sight as deceptive so much as imperfect. Fallen humans misuse their eyes, Bernard argued, and people should seek to restore their proper sight by placing their eyes in the custody of God and cleansing them through weeping and through self-knowledge. Like the rest of the body, the eyes were not inherently evil but needed to be controlled and directed through ascetic discipline and the care of others.61

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Bernard created multiple typologies to categorize types of sight. Conrad’s reworking of Herbert’s stories about his friend appears to have incorporated the typology Bernard articulated in his On Consideration. In this text, composed for Pope Eugenius III, Bernard posited a spectrum in which categories of seeing moved from the practical to the intellectual to the mystical. Bernard started with “lesser, visible things” that could be sensed with the body and used to help others, then he posited an intellectual state that used the powers of the mind to discern God, and finally he suggested an imageless contemplation of God that completely abandoned the senses.62 A person in this last state, Bernard wrote, scorns “the use of sensible objects insofar as is possible to human frailty” and “has accustomed himself occasionally to soar in contemplation to the sublime, not by gradual steps but by sudden ecstasies.”63 Yet even in a typology that described this apophatic progression, Bernard thought corporeal sight could be helpful. Despite his contrast between heavenly sight and earthly obscurity, he placed more importance on seeing visible things than had Augustine, and he expressed less concern about issues of reliability and discernment. Similarly, Conrad’s story depicts sensory visions as well as an apophatic one, suggesting that one type of vision could lead to the next. Despite Conrad’s opposition between faith and vision, even he incorporated into his stories a Cistercian interest in sensed experience. Bernard’s friend, William of St. Thierry (c. 1080–1148), also investigated faith and sight as a reaction to Abelard’s ideas. William had more contact with the intellectual developments of the northern French cathedral schools than did Bernard, for he studied either at Laon or at Rheims before becoming a monk, and he aided Bernard in identifying what the two men believed to be Abelard’s errors.64 Abelard served as an unnamed foil in William’s two treatises on faith.65 William’s Enigma of Faith responded to Abelard’s Theologia christiana by considering the nature of the Trinity, and his Mirror of Faith countered Abelard’s syllogistic and logical explorations by investigating other ways of knowing.66 William’s treatises describe a process of human reformation through which sensation, cognition, memory, and desire mediated between body and soul and created a balance between the two.67 He was more interested than Bernard in the ways the soul could move beyond corporeal vision and sensory information, and he presented thinking with images as a preliminary stage in the process of developing an imageless knowledge. Rather than considering memories of sensory experience, he focused on what he called the two eyes of spiritual sight: the power of love and the power of the intellect that together could recognize the image of God in the soul.

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William’s conception of faith was central to this progression toward the divine. He understood faith as both a movement of the will that guided human reason and as a divine gift.68 Even William’s interpretation of Romans 1:20 emphasized that one could learn from divine creation only once the heart had been nourished through faith, and his understanding of the sacraments focused more on the recipient’s faith and love than on the visible elements.69 Faith involved the active choice to submit to God’s authority, especially as God revealed himself through Scripture. In the Mirror of Faith, William articulated a three-step movement toward God, starting with the discipline of faith grounded in scriptural authority. As a person progressed, faith worked alongside reason, keeping reason’s search for truth based on authority and focusing its eye on God.70 Ultimately, William suggested, a person could develop an “affectus of faith” in the conscience. This occurred when people fully submitted to God and opened themselves to the illuminating grace that develops the soul’s likeness to God. With this gift, the soul’s powers could start to sense the divine and understand through reason and love what they once held through faith alone. Yet even these steps were only the beginning: they provided the groundwork needed for a mystical ascent through which a person could transcend the sensory world and experience an imageless vision of the divine.71 By identifying faith as the first step toward knowledge, William countered Abelard’s methods of disputation that started with questioning and doubt. William criticized “the proud questioning of the unbelieving person” and imagined such a person disputing even with the doorkeeper of heaven over the criteria for admission.72 Yet William also recognized the existence of doubt. Rather than a spur toward knowledge, he associated doubt with the self-scrutiny and humility of spiritual formation, and he thought it a natural part of the human condition. Even the faithful could waver. Certainty was possible only for the few who were already enlightened or for those so lazy and dull-witted that they did not make an effort. For the people in between, there would always be a struggle, a “plucking at the garment of faith” that whispers “maybe” and leaves faith battered.73 The danger, William thought, was not doubt but rather a confusion between a partial intellectual knowledge and the true certainty of faith. When people lost the faith in their heart, doubt could turn to despair.74 The Cistercians’ stories about sight and doubt, in the Collectaneum and even more in Conrad’s Exordium magnum, echo William’s understanding of doubt as a problem of conscience rather than of knowledge, and they offer

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the support of the Cistercian community to heal such doubt. Like Bernard and William, these story collectors did not completely reject vision. Even if their language at times created stark oppositions between faith and sight, their stories with non-Cistercian protagonists depicted a knowledge that came from seeing, and their progressions toward a nonsensory vision of God started with experiences of the visible world. Nonetheless, their stories used ideas expressed by Bernard and William to create a distinctly monastic conception of faith that opposed the new methods and investigations of the urban schools.

“Things Perceived So Clearly by Sight” When Caesarius of Heisterbach assembled his Dialogue on Miracles in the second decade of the thirteenth century, he articulated a different conception of the relation between vision and faith than his Cistercian predecessors. Caesarius also acknowledged Augustine’s categories of vision, but in his Dialogue, he suggested an equality between corporeal and spiritual vision that Augustine could not have imagined. In a conversation that Caesarius constructed between the master and the novice, the master explained that visionary experiences should be understood as a ladder. Rather than moving from corporeal to spiritual as Conrad of Eberbach suggested, corporeal and spiritual vision become the ladder’s two supports.75 Corporeal visions occur, the master noted, “when anything by the gift of God, is seen through the body and something is signified by that. . . . By this kind of vision angels and even the souls of saints are often regarded by mortal bodily eyes in bodies that they have assumed, as we will explain with exempla.”76 Spiritual vision, in comparison, is “that which takes place by means of images without bodies, as for instance, in ecstasies and in dreams.”77 Caesarius acknowledged an imageless and incorporeal intellectual vision, but since his metaphor of a ladder gave him only two supports, he included intellectual visions among the spiritual. Furthermore, the novice declared his preference for corporeal visions over spiritual ones. He told the novice master, “Although spiritual vision is of greater merit than the corporeal, nonetheless it pleases me more to hear examples of the latter, because among all visions, I prefer the possibility of seeing with bodily eyes heavenly spirits or what is even still greater, the very creator of spirits.”78 Caesarius’s novice articulated the possibility that corporeal sight could apprehend spiritual entities and perhaps even God himself.

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In his chapter on the Eucharist, Caesarius reinforced this emphasis on corporeal sight by suggesting that sight could cure doubt. In the introduction to the chapter, the narrator told the novice, “Nothing strengthens faith more than those visions in which we regard with the eyes of our body those things which we believe to be hidden under the appearance of bread and wine.”79 But whereas he started with a position similar to Engelhard’s declaration about the Eucharist, the novice’s questions shifted the master’s explanation. Initially, the master presented the Eucharist as a topic “where faith works more than human reason,” and he noted, echoing Augustine’s sermon, that “one thing is seen and quite another believed to exist.”80 Yet, after the novice asked for examples to “demonstrate” (probari) what he should believe, the master changed his position. He described a priest who saw Christ’s blood after doubting the sacrament and explained, “It is as if the Lord were saying to him: ‘if you do not believe in the sacrament, you should learn the truth through this experience. And since faith is the path to sight, let the sight of blood restore you to faith.’ ”81 The novice’s concluding statement further muddled the logic of this passage by quoting but then undermining the definition of faith that Conrad advocated in the Exordium magnum. “Although the apostle said that ‘faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,’ ” the novice proclaimed, “those things perceived so clearly by sight, as you related, are no longer believed but are known. What has been seen with so much evidence, I think I have seen myself.”82 In Caesarius’s stories, visions frequently inspired and renewed faith. In comparison with Conrad’s Exordium magnum, a large proportion of Caesarius’s protagonists were not Cistercian monks but clerics and the laity. Unlike the authors of the Collectaneum who drew their non-Cistercian stories mostly from texts, Caesarius told stories that his non-Cistercian contacts in the region around Cologne had recounted to him. He presented tales of priests who saw in the consecrated host the Virgin holding her infant to her breast, who observed the host as raw flesh, and who saw human blood in the place of wine.83 In an example of lay doubt, a “citizen who did not believe what was being done” saw the wine as blood, overflowing the chalice; Caesarius hoped that “by it, he was brought back to his faith in the sacrament.”84 A story of a doubting priest made the instrumentality of these visions clear. This priest complained that it was of no purpose for God to show visions to those who were already formed in their faith. Instead, he remarked, “these kinds of visions should be revealed to me and sinners like me who often have doubts about this sacrament.”85

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Cistercian storytellers explored and debated questions about sight and visions as did the monastic authors who wrote treatises and sermons. Their stories suggest a growing interest in corporeal sight and the sensory qualities of visions, and they demonstrate an increasing tension between the traditional Augustinian categories of vision and the experiences the stories recorded. Yet the contrast between Conrad and Caesarius also illuminates differences between a purely monastic outlook and one that sought to present stories for secular priests and the laity as well for people in religious communities.86 Conrad tried to maintain a monastic emphasis on a faith in things not seen, and he contrasted monastic faith with the rational questioning of the new schools. Caesarius, in comparison, recounted stories of doubt in secular society, and he resolved these doubts through visions that demonstrated in sensory form what earlier Cistercians thought they could see through the “eyes of faith.” The Cistercians’ late twelfth-and early thirteenthcentury stories present no consistent position on the reliability and usefulness of sight, but they do show a gradual shift toward recognizing the importance of corporeal vision. Their stories support the idea that the year 1200 was a watershed in the history of sight.

Engelhard of Langheim and Sacramental Signs The first two stories in Engelhard’s collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel also consider the relation between sight, faith, and doubt. Both stories are brief and both offer shocking visions with images that are memorable and troubling.87 In his first story, Engelhard depicted vision as confirming faith. A priest from Langheim, who “is tempted and doubts when he prays,” saw himself one night at the altar, assisting an angel of God who celebrated the mass. The angel said the words of consecration and then “divided into parts” a boy whom he had confected at the altar. The angel ordered the monk, “See so that you do not doubt anymore!” The story ends abruptly, concluding that this priest went on to live a holy life as subprior of Langheim and died a blessed death.88 Engelhard’s second tale demonstrates an unease with seeing too concretely. Engelhard remarked that “there are those today who, when they take communion at the altar and are given the blood of the Lord, it appears under their hands and eyes truly as blood, and then it returns to the appearance of

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pure wine just as it was before.”89 Rather than employing the tale to demonstrate that the consecrated wine is blood, however, Engelhard’s account explains why it resumes its appearance as wine. A man who saw the wine become blood and drank it in that form lost his speech and, “being undone by paralysis from his shoulder down, all of one part of his body dried up.”90 Engelhard concluded this short tale by explaining why people receive the consecrated sacrament in the form of bread and wine: “God, in order to show consideration, hides the appearance of his flesh and blood in the sacrament, lest it horrify those taking it, so that by seeing bread and wine, the appearance is soothing to those taking it, and faith aids those believing it flesh and blood.”91 Engelhard’s story recognizes the desire to see the transformation of the wine but also criticizes it, showing the danger of too corporeal a sight and the risk of receiving the chalice with a feeling of horror rather than faith.92 In these first two stories, Engelhard established a position about the relationship between sight and faith that he maintained throughout his collection for the nuns. He did not insist that faith was a confidence in things unseen, as had Conrad, but neither did he adopt Caesarius’s position and assert that sight by itself could renew faith and assuage doubt. Rather, he encouraged the observation of visible signs whose interpretation depended on the spiritual condition of the observer and fostered their growth in faith. Instead of employing an opposition between faith and sight drawn from the polemical writings of Bernard of Clairvaux and William of St. Thierry, Engelhard’s ideas incorporated other elements in Bernard’s monastic writings, especially Bernard’s discussion of the transformation of experience and memory. Still more central to Engelhard’s association of visible signs with a progression in faith were the ideas of Hugh of St. Victor. Like Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh was interested in the ways that heaven and earth could meet, but unlike Bernard, he articulated a conception of “sacrament” that expressed these connections. In so doing, he placed the sacraments at the center of Christian life and linked them to the development of faith. Hugh’s ideas resonate in Engelhard’s stories, for Engelhard too emphasized that visible signs could have a sacramental character that could link heaven and earth. By focusing on the signs that material objects and everyday behaviors provided, Engelhard’s stories taught their audiences a sacramental imagination through which they could develop their faith. Engelhard lived at a distance from the northern French schools, and he was not as insistent on the contrast between monastery and school as was

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Conrad of Eberbach. He did occasionally snipe at schoolmen, but he did not use his understanding of sight and faith to divide monastic and scholastic culture. What he drew from Bernard of Clairvaux’s writings on vision and faith was not Bernard’s polemic against Abelard but rather Bernard’s exploration of experience and memory. Just as Bernard asked his audiences to remember their experiences so that they could transform their memories through the crucible of monastic life, so Engelhard told stories by which his audiences could learn to interpret visible signs through the lens of their prior experiences and current practices. Similarly, like Bernard, Engelhard was more interested in signs of divine presence on earth than in the possibility of a beatific vision in heaven. Unlike William of St. Thierry, Bernard seldom discussed such beatific visions, whether in heaven or as a fleeting moment on earth, but instead explored the ways human vision could encounter the divine through images and according to a person’s own limited capacity.93 In a typology of vision that he developed in his thirty-first sermon on the Song of Songs, Bernard emphasized encounters with Christ on earth more than the possibility of the soul’s transport to heaven. As he did in the typology in his On Consideration, he again offered three categories. In the first, people learn to experience God through the created and material world. In the second, God becomes manifest through dreams and apparitions such as those the Prophets experienced. These visions, Bernard thought, take place as images or spoken words outside the individual soul. Only the third form of vision occurs in the soul. Bernard suggested that this happens “when God himself condescends to visit the soul that seeks him, provided it is devoted to seeking him with all its desire and love.”94 Even in this third form, however, the soul cannot see God as he is but only as God wishes to be seen. God appears fleetingly and chooses shapes that correspond to the character and ability of a particular soul. He might appear as a bridegroom or a physician, a shepherd or a king—signs that the soul could then interpret.95 Such visions, Bernard concluded, should be interpreted through a lens of faith that “tempers the light to the clouded eye” and helps people prepare for a full vision of God, seen through renewed corporeal eyes, after death.96 Throughout his compositions for monks, Bernard emphasized that contact with the divine developed out of a disciplined contemplation in which a monk learned to transform his memories of the world, to look within himself, and to interpret these remembered images within the context of his monastic practice.97 Bernard’s sermons, with their sensory language and powerful natural imagery, evoked such imagination and memory and taught this transformation.

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Engelhard’s stories depended on Bernard of Clairvaux’s ideas about experience and memory, but even more, their association of visible signs with the process of growing in faith resonated with the ideas of Hugh of St. Victor. A master of the school in the Parisian community of regular canons at St. Victor, Hugh employed the dialectical methods and analytical questioning of Paris’s emerging scholastic culture while also retaining a monastic emphasis on spiritual growth and moral development. For monastic writers of the late twelfth century who were aware of the growing popularity of scholastic methods and scholastic articulations of sacramental theology, Hugh’s combination of the moral with the scholastic provided an important model.98 Although his epistemology was Augustinian, he reworked Augustine’s ideas about vision and sacrament in ways that Engelhard could use. Hugh of St. Victor relied extensively on Augustine, but he modified Augustine’s ideas in two important ways. First, he argued that the created world as well as Scriptures could contain “sacred signs” that made knowledge of the divine visible. Bernard’s typology of vision from his Song of Songs sermon implied this as well, but Bernard did not take this position as consistently as did Hugh. Second, Hugh was one of the first Christian theologians to argue that sacraments contain and effect what they signify. Hugh defined sacrament as “a corporeal or material element displayed before the external senses, representing by similitude and signifying by institution and containing by sanctification some invisible and spiritual grace.”99 Although this definition moved away from Augustine’s understanding of sacrament as a “sacred sign,” Hugh did not always explore the implications of a sacrament that conferred grace as well as signifying it when he discussed specific sacraments. Nor had consensus yet coalesced around the identification of seven sacraments. By mid-century, Peter Lombard had reworked Hugh’s ideas to apply to each of seven sacraments the idea that sacraments are outward signs of an inward grace that bear its image and its cause.100 Hugh still considered numerous sacred signs as sacramental, and he thought the signs that are sacraments could resemble their hidden reality only if understood within the context of Christian history, Christian ritual, and the spiritual formation of the Christian individual. Hugh’s interest in a progression from the visible to the invisible meant that he also reworked Augustinian categories of vision. Like Augustine, Hugh distinguished between heavenly and earthly sight, but he had more confidence than Augustine in the human ability to discern signs of God through corporeal vision. He also extended Augustine’s idea of sign beyond linguistic

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communications. Just as the human voice expressed aloud a word that signified the idea in the human mind, so Hugh thought that natural objects could signify divine wisdom by making visible the voice of God.101 As a result, human knowledge could come from three different eyes: the eye of the body that could see things in the world, the eye of the intellect that could investigate the self, and the eye of contemplation that could see God.102 Human sinfulness extinguished the possibility of seeing God with the eye of contemplation, and it blurred the eye of the intellect, leaving only the eye of the body to see clearly. In a postlapsarian state, human access to knowledge of God was limited to the signs that could be discerned from Scriptures and the natural world. These signs were enigmatic, offering a clouded version of the knowledge fully possible only in heaven. They could be discerned by the senses and transferred to the soul’s intellect through the imagination, but an understanding of their meaning relied on the spiritual state of the viewer and the reformed nature of the intellect.103 At the end of the first half of his treatise On the Sacraments, Hugh linked faith to sight and sacrament by concluding that faith was one of these clouded signs. To develop his argument, he elaborated on Hebrews 11, defining faith as “a kind of certainty of the mind in things absent, established beyond opinion and short of knowledge.”104 Hugh’s conception of faith combined both intellect and emotion, both the thing believed and the process of believing, and it could grow or wane according to the spiritual condition of the believer. But in an earthly world, where people who desired a knowledge of God could understand the divine only through their imperfect perception of signs, faith itself became a sign of things to come. It was the imperfect knowledge in the human heart that enigmatically reflected the face to face contemplation of God possible in heaven. Faith, Hugh concluded, is this image in the mirror of the heart; it is “the sacrament of future contemplation, and contemplation itself is the heart and strength [res et virtus] of the sacrament.”105 The more a person could clean the heart’s mirror through education and spiritual formation, the closer this faith resembled the contemplation of God in heaven that provided true knowledge. Engelhard did not define the term sacrament, nor regularly use it in his stories. Nonetheless, his stories also assumed faith was a kind of sacrament that linked the seen to the unseen, the material to the spiritual, the present to the future. Like Hugh, Engelhard thought corporeal vision could discern knowledge of divine things but that the enigmatic signs that displayed this knowledge became clearer only through the gradual reformation of the

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observer’s soul. For Hugh, “visible signs” included both physical signs perceived by corporeal sight and the signs of the divine reflected in the heart and perceived by the eye of the intellect. For Engelhard, they included physical objects and human behaviors as well as visions and dreams. For both men, understanding these signs depended on a process of education and spiritual discipline in which ethics and knowledge were inseparable. The life of Mechthild of Diessen shows how Engelhard drew on ideas about vision and sacrament that monastic theologians, and especially Hugh of St. Victor, had articulated. As with his story of Simon of Sorø, Engelhard did not fully control the material in this vita, for he wrote it at the request of Mechthild’s family and her religious community, and he relied on them for his knowledge of her life.106 As a result of his limited information, he was not able to link sign, experience, and interpretation as tightly in his accounts of Mechthild’s visions as he did in his story collection for the nuns. Yet it is the places where these linkages break down that reveal Engelhard’s ideas. In his tale of Simon, Engelhard relied on a first-person account of visions he did not understand and could not fully interpret; in the case of Mechthild, he thought he knew the interpretations but had no evidence for the experiences. He resolved his dilemma by claiming the vita itself revealed what Mechthild, in her modesty, wished to keep hidden. As he explained these hidden visions, he made Mechthild herself into a sign to show how she moved from the sacrament of faith to a clarity of sight in heaven. Engelhard wanted to make Mechthild into a visionary who balanced contemplation with her active care for others. He even placed in her mouth a deathbed sermon in which she articulated the distinction between earthly sight and heavenly experience that Bernard and William of St. Thierry thought so important. Engelhard claimed that Mechthild told her sisters, “We do not contemplate those things that are seen, but those that are unseen, for the things that are seen are of this world while those that are unseen are eternal.”107 However, Engelhard’s efforts to describe her visions of the unseen proved unsuccessful. His prose echoed Bernard of Clairvaux’s use of the Song of Songs for describing encounters with Christ come to visit the human soul, but unlike Bernard, Engelhard could not link Mechthild’s specific experiences with this biblical language. Instead, all his descriptions of Mechthild’s visions are hypothetical. When Mechthild contemplated, Engelhard thought “the Bridegroom would have stood over her” in order to tell her sisters—the “daughters of Jerusalem”—that they should not waken the sleeping Bride. Similarly, he portrayed the Bridegroom as “seeming to say” to Mechthild,

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“whoever touches you, touches the apple of my eye” (Zechariah 2:8). Engelhard asserted that Mechthild slept in a divine embrace, about which she could proclaim “My king led me into his wine cellar and ordered charity in me,” but he could not describe any particular moment when she had such an experience. Instead, he employed still more Biblical language, especially passages from the Book of Revelation, to suggest what Mechthild might have seen. Ultimately, he used the words of Paul, exhorting Mechthild to rejoice “since you see the king of glory through a mirror and in mystery; but only however much as you are allowed to see while you walk in the flesh but are not fighting according to the flesh.”108 Even in moments of contemplation, Engelhard thought Mechthild’s visions were enigmatic and veiled, and he used biblical language to disguise his own lack of detailed knowledge. Engelhard also described two deathbed visions in which he imagined the connections between the physical signs created by the movements of Mechthild’s body and their transcendent meaning. Again, Mechthild’s own experiences were missing. In the first vision, Engelhard thought Mechthild saw Mary. He reported that after hearing her say the Ave Maria, Mechthild’s sisters brought her an image of Mary. They hoped that this visual representation would further her devotion. But Mechthild rejected the image. Engelhard concluded from her movement that Mechthild must have seen Mary herself rather than an earthly representation. “Pushing the image away with her hand,” he wrote, “she turned her eyes to the vision, which she saw in spirit, as if [quasi] she said, ‘I greet you, holy Mary, not in image but in truth.’ ”109 Engelhard’s quasi reveals his uncertainty. Since Mechthild never described this experience, Engelhard did not know what she saw. Instead, he interpreted her movements as associating the earthly image with Mary’s reality in heaven. Since Mechthild no longer needed a physical picture, she must have seen Mary in spirit. Engelhard constructed Mechthild’s second vision in the same fashion. He interpreted the continued movements of Mechthild’s mouth after she took last rites as signifying that she had received communion from an angel. In explaining the chewing and swallowing that Mechthild’s companions observed as Mechthild died, Engelhard echoed Hugh of St. Victor’s language of sacrament and vision: “Having shown this miracle, she soon dissolved her soul, communicating in joy with the communion of saints, and going with them from the sacrament to the heart [re] of the sacrament, and from the matter of faith to the face of beauty. Therein was a miracle to see, a sign not of death in death but of the splendor of life.”110 Like Hugh,

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Engelhard articulated an understanding of faith as a sacrament of the vision of God to come. Even when Mechthild received the eucharist from angels, it was still a sacrament—a sign of the divine contact she would attain after death. Only after death could she fully move with the angels from the sacramental sign to the divine essence that the sign signified, only then could she move from representations to full vision, and only then could she move from faith to a clarity of sight that was impossible on earth. Despite Engelhard’s efforts to provide Mechthild with contemplative visions of the divine, the majority of his vita assumes the importance of corporeal vision for the process of spiritual reformation. Mechthild herself became a sign, and Engelhard thought his composition would make apparent the hidden signs that signified Mechthild’s holiness. In his conclusion, he expressed the hope that, through his descriptions of Mechthild, “we may see God, who is charity, in the goodness of his elect.”111 The sight needed to see the signs of Mechthild’s holiness was not deceptive but rather partial and always in need of explanation. In depicting the movements of Mechthild’s body during her last visions, Engelhard connected an imperfect sensing of signs and representations on earth with the clarity of sight in heaven, but he also suggested this connection was possible only if the signs were properly interpreted. Just as the sisters assumed that seeing an image of Mary could help foster Mechthild’s devotion to the reality of Mary in heaven, so Engelhard presented Mechthild’s behavior—whether her character, her actions, or even her involuntary motions—as signs that demonstrated her sanctity. Just as Simon of Sorø became a visible sign that signified his spiritual struggle, so Mechthild too became a sign through whom God could make his presence known to those on earth.

Conclusion The Cistercian story collections illuminate a twelfth-century interest in corporeal sight and in the ways in which vision connected earthly and material things to heavenly ones. They display in narrative form ideas about sign, sacrament, and faith that William of St. Thierry, Hugh of St. Victor, and Bernard of Clairvaux developed earlier in the century. In retaining Augustinian epistemologies and anthropologies, these monastic theologians often seem to be conservatives who opposed emerging scholastic methods, but throughout the twelfth century, monks as well as schoolmen explored the relationship

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of education and intellectual investigation to the process of human reformation.112 The Cistercian storytellers retained an Augustinian emphasis on the subjective state of the viewer, but they adopted varied positions about vision and the development of faith. For Conrad of Eberbach, faith remained a confidence in things unseen; he, like some of the authors of the Collectaneum, posited that the communal support of a religious community would do more than vision to assuage a monk’s doubts. For Caesarius of Heisterbach and his novice, in comparison, sight strengthened faith. Whereas Conrad incorporated into his tales Bernard and William’s polemical language opposing Abelard, Caesarius instead expanded on the Cistercians’ interest in using nonCistercian stories to show how visions assuaged doubts, an interest that some of the monks who assembled the Collectaneum had started to express some forty years earlier. Engelhard’s presentation of visions occupies a middle ground between Conrad and Caesarius both conceptually and chronologically. In his story of Simon of Sorø and his vita of Mechthild, Engelhard explored the possibilities and types of vision. In all his descriptions, visions had sensory qualities that helped verify their truth. Yet the visions in his tales were always “visible signs” that signified something beyond what they showed. Engelhard neither rejected vision as opposed to faith nor advocated corporeal sight for strengthening faith. Instead he advocated sight but only as intertwined with the spiritual disposition of the viewer. As demonstrated by his story of the man who received the blood in communion, the problem was not seeing but the feeling of horror that such direct vision might elicit. Like Caesarius, Engelhard thought that visions could help those who needed assistance, but he did not think there was anything intrinsic in the thing observed that would provide this help. Instead, the visions in his stories helped his audiences to imagine the connections between heaven and earth and to learn the interpretations he associated with faith. Although he never explicitly defined what he meant by “visible signs,” his stories show an emphasis on seeing and sensing that he shared with Hugh of St. Victor. They demonstrate Engelhard’s insistence that such visible signs be interpreted in the context of Christian ritual, doctrine, and the communal culture of his monasteries. As nuns and monks were formed by the discipline of Cistercian monasticism, their interpretation of signs became ever clearer, and they developed the faith that was itself a sacramental sign of the face to face vision of God they hoped to achieve in heaven.

chapter 4

Visions of the Eucharist

The sacrament of the altar is the foundation for all works. For no matter whether a structure has gold or silver or precious stones, it cannot stand but falls without Christ. Paul testifies to this, signifying through these stones the virtues that are praiseworthy and glorious in Christ but perishable and ruinous without Christ. Let us build on this. We will relate events to be believed, that ought and can be proved. Still, they cannot be proved by human reason, although they can be by the divine. It is not right to deny those things for which God is witness, which it is useful to use and the fruit of life to enjoy, because in such things is the life of the spirit.1

The introduction and first five stories in Engelhard’s book for the nuns of Wechterswinkel consider the Eucharist. In these chapters, Engelhard paraphrased Augustine of Hippo, but he also reworked Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In this epistle, the apostle states, “No one can lay a foundation other than the one that has been laid and that foundation is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). Paul thought the followers of Christ should build on Christ’s foundation and that the character of their work would be visible at the end of time. Those whose work survived would be rewarded immediately, but the others would be tested further before they were saved. In the first chapter of his story collection, Engelhard reused Paul’s imagery but transposed Paul’s message. Engelhard’s concerns were epistemological rather than eschatological. Instead of presenting Christ as the foundation, Engelhard offered the Eucharist; instead of emphasizing salvation, he moved from the

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visible qualities of the sacrament to “the things that ought and can be proved.” As he did when he paraphrased Augustine’s sermon, Engelhard reworded Paul’s letter to express his interest in how visible signs taught religious men and women to imagine connections between heaven and earth. Over the course of the twelfth century, a religiosity that focused on the sacraments started to overshadow a monastic culture based on prayer and contemplation. The role of priests in the administration of the sacraments became increasingly important, even within monasteries, and by the end of the century, male authors began to describe a form of female devotion to the Eucharist that confirmed priests’ sacramental powers. Engelhard’s stories suggest that he and his audiences sidestepped these developments. Engelhard incorporated into his tales new ideas about visible signs, and he adapted to new forms of communication. At the same time, he downplayed the sacramental powers of the priesthood and ignored new forms of eucharistic piety. His stories illuminate possibilities open to religious men and women that are often obscured by the accounts of male authors who used their depictions of women to emphasize their own sacerdotal roles. As the paraphrase of Paul suggests, Engelhard thought stories about the Eucharist could construct faith. The previous chapter considered the ways that Engelhard and his Cistercian contemporaries used exempla to explore the relation of vision, faith, and doubt; this chapter examines Engelhard’s stories about the Eucharist to analyze how their messages might shape their audiences. These stories illuminate Engelhard’s efforts to preserve traditional Cistercian understandings of this sacrament in a changing religious environment. Twelfth-century Cistercian writings about the Eucharist illuminate forms of eucharistic devotion within the context of a highly ritualized and disciplined Christian life, and they suggest that, in this as in many other things, Cistercian perspectives on the mass became more varied over time. Whereas Bernard of Clairvaux had used eucharistic imagery to describe monastic life, later Cistercian authors focused on the sacrament itself and used both monastic stories and those from non-Cistercian sources to teach doctrine and the proper behavior toward the host.2 More than his contemporaries, Engelhard emphasized the spiritual state of the sacrament’s recipient over the actions of a priest. His stories still describe a Cistercian culture in which the multiple meanings of the Eucharist signified fundamental ideas underpinning monastic life, but they also show how he transposed this culture to address a community of religious women who could not perform the mass. His often shocking images interacted with the liturgical culture of his

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monastery and with the experiences of nuns and monks to foster their monastic formation. By teaching audiences to see by interpreting visible signs, Engelhard’s stories encouraged a sacramental but nonsacerdotal religiosity at a time when the priestly performance of the mass had become a central expression of divine presence on earth.

Cistercian Theologies of the Eucharist Engelhard’s depiction of the Eucharist as the foundation for works articulates the truism that the Eucharist was the fundamental ritual within medieval Christianity. Importance does not imply stasis. The complex meanings of the mass have a history that reflects changes in Christian theology, in religious behavior, and in the interaction of theological ideas with their sociopolitical environments. Jaroslav Pelikan and Gary Macy remind us not to read into other eras the terms, definitions, and debates of medieval scholastics and early modern reformers, and Miri Rubin demonstrates that the religious symbols associated with the Eucharist must be “read in motion,” as part of a nexus of power relations that defined clerical status, gender relations, and Christian– Jewish interactions.3 The preponderance of modern studies of the medieval Eucharist, however, still emphasize the theological debates that foreshadow Protestant–Catholic difference, or they explore the expressions of lay piety and female eucharistic devotion that dominate our understanding of late medieval Christianity. Less studied has been the role of the Eucharist in monastic life.4 Scholars recognize that the frequent performance of private masses increased within many twelfth-century monastic communities, largely because of the growing number of monastic priests, but monastic ideas and concerns have been overshadowed by scholastic investigations of the sacrament and by a growing separation between clerical and lay. Twelfth-century Cistercian writings on the Eucharist provide an alternative perspective. They illuminate forms of eucharistic devotion within the context of a highly ritualized Christian life. Engelhard’s stories draw on a Cistercian culture in which the multiple meanings of eucharistic symbols signified fundamental premises in Christianity, but for which the ritual transformation of bread and wine was only one among many connections between heaven and earth. For Cistercian monks, the Eucharist was concurrently central and superfluous. On the one hand, it encapsulated a complex of ideas essential to Christian life, including conceptions of Christ’s body, the Church, the power

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of priests, the importance of faith, and the nature of the human soul. On the other hand, Cistercian monks articulated and enacted these ideas in multiple ritualized forms. The Eucharist focused attention on divine presence made possible through Christ’s Incarnation and Passion, but liturgical prayer, contemplation, and penitential labor also fostered this presence. Cistercian authors used images of eating, incorporation, transformation, and sacrifice to describe the Eucharist, but they employed the same language to describe multiple forms of contact with the divine, of which the mass was only one among many.5 As a result, Cistercian ideas about the Eucharist were inseparable from their conception of monastic life and the rhythms of their liturgical performances. Cistercian teachings emphasized the importance of an individual’s spiritual growth and personal worthiness, whether to receive the sacrament or to encounter Christ in contemplation. Some authors even suggested that the physical reception of the sacrament might be superfluous for those striving toward a contemplative encounter with Christ. They offered an understanding of the Eucharist that focused on the spiritual state of the recipient. One of the earliest indications of Cistercian ideas about the Eucharist comes from an elaborate miniature tipped into a copy of Jerome’s Commentaries on Daniel (Figure 6).6 This image, created at Cıˆteaux between 1110 and 1130, depicts Daniel sitting in the lion’s den on a backless throne. His feet rest on a lion and he raises his hands. A transparent angel flies across the upper right margin. He carries a poised Habakkuk by his hair, preparing to drop him into the enclosure. The image derives from Daniel 14, in which an angel transports Habakkuk to Babylon to feed stew to Daniel. Since Jerome’s commentary questions the authenticity of this passage, the miniature has a complex relation with Jerome’s text, and it offers a message about the promise of salvation by using eucharistic symbolism. Rather than bearing stew, this Habakkuk holds a wine jug and bread carried on a linteum, Daniel appears as Christ on an altar-like throne, and the image is framed by an elaborate ornamental border with reminders of the canon of the mass.7 This Cıˆteaux miniature focuses on the recipient of the sacrament rather than on the celebrant. This is an unusual interpretation of Habakkuk. In Romanesque iconography, Habakkuk usually represents a priest, and Daniel, whose prophecies seem to foreshadow an eschatological judgment, symbolizes Christ’s triumph over Satan and death.8 In the miniature neither Daniel nor Habakkuk appears as a priest. Habakkuk is a deacon who presents the bread and wine needed for consecration, and Daniel, although regal on his throne,

Figure 6. Daniel in the lion’s den as an image of eucharistic reception. Dijon, Bibliothe`que Municipale, MS 132, fol. 2v.

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raises his hands in a gesture of prayer rather than blessing, invoking the Cistercians’ depiction of Daniel as a contemplative.9 The monks who viewed the image would have recognized in it resonances of Psalm 50, a psalm that they chanted daily but also intoned during the mass when the deacon presented the bread and wine at the altar. Through that psalm, monks offered the sacrifice of their “humble spirit and contrite heart” to God. By the time Engelhard wrote, most Cistercians no longer employed elaborate artistic images to communicate their ideas, but this early miniature expresses a web of ideas that he and other Cistercian authors continued to associate with the Eucharist. The early Cistercians insisted on their strict observance of the Benedictine Rule, but the Rule provided little guidance about the performance of the mass and the reception of the Eucharist. It warned against the potential pride of monastic priests, and it emphasized the daily office as the central liturgical ritual of monastic life.10 By the eleventh century, however, the performance of the mass in many monasteries had increased in importance and in frequency. Many communities performed two masses a day.11 In addition, a growing number of monk-priests performed private masses. At Cluny, private masses so proliferated that its twelfth-century monastic life seemed more a collection of private celebrations than communal offerings of worship and intercession.12 Some new twelfth-century religious houses reacted to the accretion of liturgical obligations by simplifying the daily offices and reducing the number of masses. The Carthusians, for example, held a conventual mass only on Sundays, while the canons of He`rival eliminated liturgical rituals altogether.13 More difficult was the elimination of private masses, as the tendency of the new monasteries to admit only adults meant that they drew many of their monks from the priesthood. Cistercian monks developed a middle path between the elaborate rites of older monasteries and the sparse liturgies of some new religious communities. They shortened the daily offices and initially reduced the number of conventual masses to one a day, although by the end of the century, they had introduced a second mass on Sundays and feast days.14 They also insisted that the daily offices and the communal mass take precedence over private celebrations. Priests could perform private masses but only during the time set aside for reading and only if mass did not interfere with communal rituals.15 But even as the Cistercians set limits on the number of daily masses, they increased the frequency with which monks took communion. Whereas monks at Cluny received the host once a month and on

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feast days, the Cistercians instituted a weekly communion for the monks in addition to communion on major feasts.16 Their frequent reception of the Eucharist suggests that they considered it an important element of their monastic life and one that took precedence over their duties as priests. The mass could symbolize the concord of Cistercian communities but it also displayed divisions. It was one of the few rituals that the monks and the laybrothers celebrated together. Laybrothers who worked on granges often returned to the monastery on days when the monks held two masses. Masses for the recently deceased also brought together the entire community.17 Laybrothers could not perform the mass, although nonordained monks might assist at the altar.18 Laybrothers sat in their own stalls in the church, they stood and sat in unison rather than in alternating patterns, and they could work through mass if necessary, substituting repeated Pater nosters for their attendance. Whereas the monks received communion weekly, the laybrothers received communion monthly, a stipulation later reduced to seven times a year.19 The performance of the daily office further reinforced these differences in status, for the laybrothers’ offices did not include the psalter, and their prayers were limited to a set of short responses and the Pater noster and Credo, which they memorized. The one psalm they learned was Psalm 50, the Miserere mei Deus, suggesting the importance of the penitential offering of a contrite heart for laybrothers as well as monks.20 We know little about the performance of the mass and the reception of the Eucharist within twelfth-century communities of Cistercian women.21 David Williams posits that there were at least twenty houses of Cistercian women by 1147, “each under the regular care of a Cistercian abbot,” but he does not specify the nature of that care.22 The foundation charter of Ichtershausen in 1147 notes that the nuns could choose their provost from a community of Augustinian canons. Wechterswinkel had two long-serving provosts. One appears on charters from the 1140s until 1178, and the other served in the first decades of the thirteenth century, but it is not clear where these provosts lived nor whether they performed the mass as well as assisted with their community’s economic welfare.23 By the thirteenth century, some abbeys of Cistercian women had chaplains as well as provosts, although in 1210, the abbess of Las Huelgas received a reprimand for blessing her own nuns, hearing confessions, and preaching publicly.24 It is unknown whether twelfth-century nuns, who were technically lay, followed the institutes of the Cistercian laybrothers or those of the monks.

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Arrangements at non-Cistercian abbeys provide evidence for options open to Cistercian nuns. When Heloise asked Abelard for advice about modifying the Benedictine Rule for female observances at the Paraclete, Abelard responded that the nuns there should take communion at least three times a year, that a priest should visit the Paraclete daily to perform the mass, and that Heloise should arrange this visit so that the priest could arrive and depart without being seen by the nuns. Abelard’s instructions did not prevent Heloise from worrying that the Paraclete would not have a suitable priest after Abelard’s death.25 Herrad of Hohenbourg established endowments for communities of regular canons so that these priests could provide pastoral care to her female community.26 Women in double houses, whether Benedictine or Augustinian, could hear the daily performance of the mass; in some cases, they appear to have joined the men in a common space.27 Priests were not always as reluctant to provide spiritual care for nuns as some regulatory evidence suggests, and some found in their relations with religious women a way of modeling their actions on Jesus’ care for women.28 Clerical stories about religious women emphasize their ability to see both the spiritual state of the celebrant and the presence of Christ in the bread and wine, suggesting that some male authors employed female visionaries to encourage priestly reform and to support priestly authority.29 But some nuns may also have bypassed clerical control of the sacrament. Jean Leclercq identifies two manuscripts used by religious women that include an ordo for communion without a priest, while Fiona Griffiths analyzes two thirteenth-century embroidered altar cloths that depict nuns adoring Christ without a priestly intermediary.30 In emphasizing reception rather than consecration, and by focusing on spiritual communion, contrition, and personal worthiness, Engelhard’s writings to women articulate a sacramental spirituality that suggested women could find connections between heaven and earth in multiple aspects of their religious lives without relying on the intermediary of a priest. Many Cistercian writings associate the Eucharist’s meanings with the totality of Cistercian life rather than with the specific actions of a priest. Cistercian treatises on the sacrament of the altar describe a Eucharist that encapsulates a life of renunciation structured around the imitation of Christ’s sacrifice, and they emphasize the importance of the spiritual union with Christ that the sacrament symbolizes. Their authors differ in their stress on corporeal reception.31 William of St. Thierry, who composed his De sacramento altaris before he joined the Cistercians in 1135, argued that corporeal reception of the sacrament in the species of bread and wine aided the

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salvation of the body by bringing Christ’s glorified body into contact with the human body and preparing it for future immortality.32 Isaac of Stella and Baldwin of Ford, who wrote in the third quarter of the twelfth century, placed more emphasis on the sacrament’s effect on the spiritual regeneration of the soul.33 Isaac’s allegorical exploration of the canon of the mass offers a series of triads that associates figures from the Hebrew Bible with the liturgy of the mass to describe the physical reception of the Eucharist within the framework of the soul’s progression toward the divine.34 Baldwin of Ford’s De sacramento altaris highlights the reception of the sacrament through faith and love to such an extent that he thought spiritual reception could take place without the reception of the physical elements. Baldwin argued that a growth in faith caused by living a life in imitation of Christ’s sufferings provided a spiritual reception, whether or not sacramental reception took place.35 Baldwin also offered a self-conscious monastic response to scholastic investigations, for he critiqued theologians for spending too much time debating terms such as forma, materia, species, and substantia and for holding as certain only what they could determine “through the conjecture of human reason.” Like Conrad of Eberbach, he considered the Eucharist as the great test of human faith, arguing that God’s wisdom is not found in human reason or philosophical writings and that the Eucharist should be approached through admiration and wonder rather than through rational analysis.36 Cistercian treatises on the mass consider the nature of the sacrament but present its reception in relation to a monk’s spiritual progression. Cistercian sermons and devotional writings do the converse, depicting monastic life and its progressions by using eucharistic imagery. It is striking how little Bernard of Clairvaux discussed the sacraments, including the performance of the mass. Bernard focused instead on the recipients’ responsiveness to sacramental signs.37 He found the mystery of God’s hidden presence in the world in a variety of actions and objects, including foot washing, a bishop’s ring, and Jesus’ circumcision, as well as in baptism and the Eucharist. Even in a Maundy Thursday sermon devoted to the sacraments, he only briefly touched on the Eucharist, arguing that that this sacrament continued the effects of baptism by bringing the sinful soul to health.38 Bernard instead stressed participation in Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice through the discipline of an ascetic life, an idea that Gregory the Great had expressed in his Dialogues.39 In one of his sermons on the penitential psalm, Qui habitat, Bernard asked, “What is it to eat his flesh and to drink his blood if not to share his sufferings and imitate the way of life he displayed in the flesh? So the holy sacrament of the

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altar in which we receive the body of the Lord teaches us that just as the bread enters our body so our Lord enters us in order to dwell in our hearts through faith.”40 Similarly, Bernard’s sermons on the Song of Songs demonstrate how penitential contrition and tears become a contemplative participation in Jesus’ sacrifice. In one sermon, Bernard lamented the daily cares that took him from contemplation and prevented him from having sufficient time to weep, and he saw tears as contributing to his sacrificial offering: “With what tears will I irrigate the barrenness of my vineyard? All its sprouts have withered through neglect, they are in ruins, without fruit because they have no moisture. Good Jesus, you are witness to how many of these bundles of twigs are consumed daily in your sacrifice by the searing contrition in my heart. I beg you, accept the broken spirit as a sacrifice: ‘you will not scorn this crushed and broken heart, O God’ ” (Psalm 50:19).41 Bernard combined the reception of the sacrament with the recipient’s spiritual state so tightly that the one is nearly indistinguishable from the other. Nowhere in this discussion of a daily sacrifice does Bernard mention the reception of consecrated bread and wine. Instead, the contrite heart of the psalm becomes both sacrifice and the preparation for its reception. Other Cistercian authors similarly linked spiritual growth with images of eucharistic reception. In his Golden Letter to Carthusian monks, William of St. Thierry described contemplation of the Passion in eucharistic terms: “As often as you stir up sentiments of piety and faith in recalling to mind him who suffered for you,” he told these monks, “you eat his body and drink his blood.”42 Baldwin of Ford, who ended his treatise on the Eucharist with a long discussion of a life of virtue, made the nearly identical point: “The spiritual drink, therefore, is drunk not only by those who drink the Lord’s blood when they drink it at the reception of the sacrament itself, but by all the righteous who, from the days of old, have had faith in the passion of Christ and have lived spiritually in that faith, mortifying their flesh with its vices and desires, and displaying a likeness of the passion of Christ by the patient endurance of their tribulations.”43 For these authors, the penitential discipline, self-examination, and contemplation central to their monastic life made the purpose and meaning of the Eucharist continually present to them. Yet the sacrament also encapsulated in one rite the totality of their monastic practice, and it connected life on earth with the redemptive example of Christ. Its physical nature both expressed and fostered connections that they considered essential, linking body to soul, connecting human to divine, and binding the monks together into a microcosm of the Church. As a result, the

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sacrament both summed up their monastic life and allowed the entirety of their monastic life to become sacramental.

Sacrifice and Self-Sacrifice Engelhard of Langheim’s paraphrase of I Corinthians replaced Christ’s foundation with the Eucharist. In making this substitution, Engelhard implied that the sacrament formed the foundation for his own work. Indeed, he started his collection of stories with a discussion of the epistemological problems raised by the Eucharist, especially questions about knowing what cannot be seen and connecting visible signs to the truths they signify. As Chapter 3 argues, Engelhard neither rejected vision as opposed to faith nor advocated corporeal vision as a means of creating faith. Instead, he explored the interpretation of visible signs and associated interpretation with the spiritual development of the viewer and his audience. Rather than depicting the process of transformation through the actions of a priest, Engelhard’s stories emphasized the personal worthiness of the recipient and taught his audiences how to see. Engelhard’s protagonists saw, but the visions that Engelhard described did not directly express their meanings. Instead, these signs often illuminate yet another sign that also requires interpretation. The layered structure of Engelhard’s stories makes this interpretative process clear. A protagonist’s experience usually forms the heart of his stories. A person might see a host transformed into a child, or Mary carrying a chalice of sweat, but the child and the chalice did not by themselves indicate what they signified. At times, a saintly apparition explained their meaning. The characters within the story who heard or witnessed the protagonist’s experience also contributed to the interpretation by modeling a response for Engelhard’s audience to imitate. Engelhard’s narrative voice shaped the tale and provided still more explanation. Finally, the audiences who heard or read Engelhard’s stories understood them within the context of their monastic culture, finding resonances and meanings in their own memories and experiences and in the prayers and liturgical language central to their monastic practice. The layers in Engelhard’s stories encourage their audiences to construct what the cognitive psychologists Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier call “cognitive blends.” Turner and Fauconnier argue that images and metaphors are constitutive of human thought and form as people draw connections

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between sensory perceptions and concepts and between what they know and what they seek to understand.44 Much metaphor theory considers this a unidirectional mapping between target and source; conceptual blending, in comparison, expands insights from metaphor theory to explore the complex mapping whereby images combine concepts from multiple mental spaces. In demonstrating the cultural assumptions that metaphors both borrow and create, conceptual blending connects the experiences of the readers with the worlds created within the text, and it illuminates how stories can shape their readers’ thoughts and imaginative positions.45 In Engelhard’s stories, the blending of visible signs with the saintly apparitions and with the narrator’s voice models intellectual and emotional responses and encourages the audiences to further connect the narratives with their own behaviors, memories, and knowledge. These interpretative practices taught Engelhard’s audiences to see beyond the central image provided by corporeal vision, to understand and to believe its layers of meaning, and thus to have the faith that helped them see dimly on earth what they hoped to see clearly in heaven.46 Engelhard’s stories about the Eucharist emphasize the importance of sight but warn that one should not ask to see too concretely. As discussed in Chapter 3, Engelhard’s first two tales present brief images without much narrative interpretation, offering shocking visions with images that are memorable and troubling.47 Both stories acknowledge doubt as their central concern, but neither tries to prove the Real Presence.48 Nor does either assume the influence of a community whose prayers and faith could restore the protagonist to spiritual health. Instead, both tales worked as exemplary texts, creating resonances with other aspects of Cistercian culture to shape their meaning, elicit emotions, and reinforce common knowledge. They cured doubts by reminding their audiences of the spiritual growth needed to interpret the tales’ visible signs. Engelhard’s first stories in his collection, with their depictions of dismembered children and chalices of blood, echo a tale of transformation and doubt in the late antique Vitae patrum. However, they modify this older account, shifting the emphasis from the transformation of the elements to the attitude of the recipient. The resemblance of Engelhard’s stories to a tale in a written text indicates the complicated interaction between oral and textual material in his compositions. The Benedictine Rule recommends that the monks might hear portions of the Vitae patrum after Compline. Its stories were considered edifying bedtime reading in comparison to the Heptateuch or the books of the Kings.49 Engelhard did not acknowledge the Vitae patrum

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as a source for his story; he may not even have recognized the kinship. Nonetheless, even if the Vitae patrum were less stimulating than the books of the Hebrew Bible, Engelhard’s stories suggest that images from this text may have appeared in monastic dreams and visions.50 The Vitae patrum contains two tales of dismembered children. In one, a Jewish man who sought to test Christian claims about the Real Presence saw “an infant torn limb from limb in the hands of St. Basil” and immediately converted to Christianity.51 In the other, an elderly and unlearned monk persisted in believing that the sacramental bread is a symbol and not Christ’s “natural body.” The monk’s friends could not convince him otherwise, so the monk prayed that the truth be revealed to him and to his companions. At mass, instead of seeing bread on the altar, the three men saw a young boy. When the priest extended his hand to break the bread, the monks saw an angel descend from heaven with a knife in its hand, stab the boy, and catch his blood in a chalice. When the priest broke the bread, the angel cut up the child. When the doubting monk approached the altar to take communion, he received bloody flesh. He cried out that he finally recognized that the bread of the sacrament becomes Christ’s flesh and that the chalice holds his blood. In response, the flesh and blood returned to the appearance of bread and wine, and the monks received both elements “in full truth and faith.” The story addresses the visionary monk’s doubts about the presence of Christ in the sacrament, but it also explains the necessity of the sacraments’ appearance as bread and wine. It concludes, “God knows human nature, because it is not possible to eat raw flesh, and because of this he transforms his body into bread and blood into wine, for those who receive them with faith.”52 In both these tales, the shock and horror of the visions and their offer of blood and flesh changed the men who saw them. The visions removed the monk’s doubts and provoked the Jewish observer’s conversion. Both stories were recopied and retold during later debates over the Real Presence in Eucharist. By the late Middle Ages, authors used them to illustrate the importance of believing without visual proof.53 Seldom, however, did they inspire modifications and variations.54 Engelhard’s first story, of the doubting priest at Langheim, incorporates significant elements from the second Vitae patrum tale without copying it directly. Engelhard’s tale also presents a doubting protagonist, describes an angel sacrificing a baby at the mass, and employs the same verb (dividere) for the angel’s “division” of the child and the division of the host. Yet the two tales differ in significant ways. Most importantly, Engelhard’s story does not

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take place during the moment of consecration. Engelhard’s protagonist “doubts while he prays,” and his vision of the mass comes to him at night. Nor does Engelhard describe the nature of the protagonist’s doubts. Prayer, especially nighttime prayer, was a time for contemplation and selfexamination; the doubts may have reflected questions about salvation or suitability for monastic life rather than about the transformation of the host. Furthermore, Engelhard’s story does not acknowledge the horror of the vision. The angel’s division of the baby was bloodless, and the protagonist did not receive the baby’s flesh in communion. Rather, the story emphasizes sight. It told the priest to see so that he would no longer doubt. Engelhard’s story imparts its message by blending its images with elements from the Cistercians’ religious culture. Both the protagonist and the audience must have recognized the baby as the Christ child, but the story leaves ambiguous whether they should understand the vision as a warning, a reward, or a lesson. The story could be read as accusatory. By eliciting a vision of a baby’s dismemberment, the monk’s doubt associated him with Herod, whose soldiers massacred innocent children. More generally, they implicate him as if he were a Jew supposedly culpable for Jesus’ death and the murder of a child.55 Read this way, the monk’s doubt is also his blindness and, in asking him to see the consequences of his doubt, the angel’s command restores his vision. But the vision could also be understood as a reward. If the monk saw the divided child through the lens of his Christian faith, his vision could connect Jesus’ Incarnation with his Passion. The English Cistercian Aelred of Rievaulx made this association in one of his sermons for the Nativity, equating the Christ Child wrapped in swaddling clothes with veiling of the sacrament, for “in this manger, under the species of bread and wine is the true body and blood of Christ.”56 For Aelred, the thought of the Christ Child as sacrifice was not a matter for horror; rather it celebrated God’s love for humanity. Similarly, babies described in visions of the Eucharist tend to represent the nourishment and comfort that Jesus’ Incarnation could provide.57 Engelhard’s story also linked Incarnation and Passion. His brief account illuminates the different emotions that sight could elicit, and it demonstrates how Engelhard’s stories associated the visible signs in his tales with ideas and emotions already familiar to his audiences. If Engelhard’s first story is bloodless, his second makes blood central. Caroline Walker Bynum argues for the asymmetrical nature of body and blood, suggesting that body tends to signify nourishment and unity but that

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blood is harder to contain and can both cleanse and accuse.58 In the story of the monk who became paralyzed by drinking the blood he saw in the chalice, blood accuses. Unlike the Vitae patrum story, which explains that God transforms flesh and blood into bread and wine because it is against human nature to eat raw flesh, Engelhard’s account focuses on the emotions of a recipient who accepted the sacrament with horror and disgust.59 This story again leaves much unsaid.60 Nonetheless, while recognizing the desire to see the transformation of the wine, it also criticizes this wish and shows the danger of a corporeal sight with which the recipient risked receiving the chalice in the wrong emotional state.61 Even more than the first two stories, Engelhard’s third vision illuminates the way the sacrament of the Eucharist intertwined with the Cistercians’ understanding of the sacrifice of monastic life. Like the stories that preceded it, this tale is short and graphic. Unlike the first two, it considers both body and blood, incarnation and sacrifice. One day during mass, as a lay monk from Langheim named Gotschalk assisted the priest, Gotschalk saw the Virgin Mary seated on the altar. At the moment when the host was broken, he watched Mary, “with a silver knife, cut up [dividentem] a small child, and the blood from each of these cuts ran into the chalice.” Unlike the story of the man who drank the blood in a chalice, this blood neither accused nor horrified. Instead Engelhard informed his audience that Gotschalk “displayed no sadness, because he was worthy to see it.”62 In combining the dismemberment of a child with the collection of its blood, this story echoes the account from the Vitae patrum even more than Engelhard’s first two tales. Yet Engelhard again transformed the nature of the sacrifice that the Vitae patrum story describes. In both the Vitae patrum account and Engelhard’s first tale, the angel who divided the child served as a representative of God, linking God and the priest so as to make the mass into a sacrifice of God, to God, by God. In his third story, however, Engelhard replaced the angel with Mary. Much twelfth-century Marian devotion emphasizes Mary’s role as a mother whose empathic suffering with Jesus on the Cross creates a model of perfect compassion.63 Mary’s role is usually passive, and her suffering results more from the perfection of her human condition than from her actions. The piercing sword of Simeon’s prophecy at the Presentation symbolizes her passivity, for it points back to her reception of the Word at the Incarnation and points forward to her suffering at the Passion.64 In Engelhard’s story, however, Mary does not just consent to the Incarnation and Passion and grieve for Jesus’ sufferings. She holds the knife.

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As in Engelhard’s first two tales, this story provides a condensed image whose meanings emerge as it blended with its audiences’ exegetical and liturgical experiences. Central to understanding the story are the ideas expressed in the Cistercians’ writings for the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin and the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple.65 In these two conflated events, Mary actively makes offerings rather than serving as the passive vessel through which God’s Word and Jesus’ pain entered the world. The merging of a mother’s purification and a son’s presentation, which in ancient Jewish rites would have been separate ceremonies, began as early as the Gospel of Luke. Their combination doubled Mary’s offering since she brought both birds and her child to the Temple. By the eighth century, western Christian images of the Presentation often locate Mary and Simeon on either side of an altar across which Mary passes Jesus. By the twelfth century, many representations of the Presentation, such as that on the western portal at Chartres, portray Jesus standing on the altar, supported by Mary and Simeon. Some images make the eucharistic resonances and Mary’s agency in the sacrifice even more explicit. One striking miniature from an eleventh-century benedictional from the Bavarian monastery of St. Emmeram shows Mary handing Jesus to Simeon as if she were a priest elevating the host: the parallelism is emphasized by a chalice on the altar below the child.66 Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons for the Purification of the Virgin elaborate on the theme of sacrifice. They transform Engelhard’s horrifying image of infanticide into an act of loving sacrifice for the benefit of humanity. Bernard linked the Purification and Presentation with the Passion. In one sermon for the Purification, he wrote, “For on this day, the atoning victim, the victim pleasing to God, is offered in the Temple by the Virgin’s hands,” while in a second he addressed Mary directly, asking her to offer the fruit of her womb to God because the sacrifice of this holy victim will provide for human reconciliation.67 Bernard reminded his audience of the parallels between Mary’s willingness to offer Jesus at the Temple and Jesus’ willing sacrifice on the Cross, for “the time will come when this victim will no longer be offered in the Temple, nor in the arms of Simeon, but will be offered outside the city and in the arms of the cross.”68 Bernard’s sermon moved from one sacrifice to the other, while Engelhard’s image of Mary presents the two concurrently. Just as Engelhard’s first story combines the Incarnation with the Passion, so this third tale combines the Presentation, the Passion, and the Eucharist, for all redeem humanity though the offering of Jesus’ flesh and blood.

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Yet Mary offers more than her son. In Cistercian writings for the Purification, Mary also offers herself. Jesus’ flesh and blood are Mary’s for he is the fruit of her womb. The Cistercians’ liturgy for the Feast of the Purification explains Mary’s sacrifice as a self-sacrifice that the monks should emulate. The Collect that begins the feast-day mass links the monks’ inward state with Mary’s offering, for the monks “humbly beseech Your Majesty that, as your only-begotten Son was this day presented in the Temple in the substance of our flesh, so also you will grant us to be presented to you with souls made pure.”69 Before their procession with candles through the cloister, the monks again ask that God “grant that those who, through your gift, each year offer their devoted worship outwardly, may inwardly attain to the grace of your light.”70 Similarly, in another of Bernard’s sermons for the Presentation, he insisted, “if anyone should fail to advance and to go forward from virtue to virtue, let him know full well that he is not in the procession at all, but is simply standing still or rather going backwards.”71 Like Mary and Jesus, the monks should make a sacrifice, but what, Bernard asked, do they have to offer? “Two little things,” he concluded: their bodies and their souls. Just as Mary, Simeon, and the boy Jesus were the three participants at the Presentation, so there should be three parts to each monk’s sacrifice: he should offer a strong and firm character in his soul, a virginal chastity through his continence, and a simple and childlike humility in his conscience.72 Both the liturgy and Bernard’s sermons blend Jesus, Mary, and Cistercian monks into a single image of self-sacrifice and spiritual development. The resonances between Engelhard’s tale and Bernard’s writings on the Presentation suggest that Gotschalk’s reaction to his vision is crucial to the tale. Here again, Engelhard’s account differs from the Vitae patrum. Gotschalk, who was “worthy to see” the sacrifice, received his vision as a confirmation of his virtue. The vision implied that he had enacted what Bernard’s sermon advocated: a sacrifice of himself through the control of his body and will and the development of his conscience. The story provides little information about Gotschalk, but Engelhard concluded his tale by promising to tell more later, “in order to picture his customs, life and death, as brevity permits, not as his merits demand.”73 Gotschalk appears in two more tales. In one, Gotschalk saw the monks and laybrothers, who were eating together in the refectory, as kings before God; Engelhard interpreted this as demonstrating that both monks and laybrothers would be saved.74 A second more elaborate account further develops Gotschalk’s character. It depicts a spiritual struggle in which Gotschalk “endured much before he

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came to perfection,” and it describes his death alongside one of his friends.75 It also recounts a second vision that he experienced during the mass. As Gotschalk approached the altar, he felt a pressure on his chest, pushing him back. He initially thought this feeling signified that he was unworthy to take communion, but when he looked down, he saw his chest had opened, and he glimpsed within himself a beautiful little boy. Recognizing this child as his soul, he took communion with confidence and, from that day forward, he “became so fervent in spirit that he is considered an angel among men.”76 The two imagined boys in Engelhard’s accounts of Gotschalk’s visions teach their audiences to recognize the relationship of sacrifice and personal development. Engelhard did not cite Psalm 50 to advocate the sacrifice of a contrite heart, but that oft-repeated passage underpins these tales. Like Conrad of Eberbach and Bernard of Clairvaux before him, Engelhard intertwined a conception of monastic life as an imitation of Christ’s sacrifice with the sacrifice of the Eucharist. Just as Mary bore Jesus within her body, so Gotschalk possessed a child within his chest.77 Just as Mary sacrificed her child, so Gotschalk sacrificed himself. The vision of Mary sacrificing her child condenses a powerful set of images, encapsulating the span of Jesus’ life from Incarnation to Passion, and it demonstrates the hidden reality of Christ’s presence as well as the hidden character of the individual soul. Unlike Abbot Daniel’s story in the Vitae patrum, Gotschalk’s vision of a dismembered child did not display the relationship between the physical bread and the hidden reality of Christ’s body. Instead, it helped its audience imagine a different, hidden reality: a personal transformation that itself became a sacrament, brought about by self-sacrifice and maternal love.78 Engelhard’s two stories depict a sacramental offering in which women and nonsacerdotal men could serve as officiants, offering themselves in sacrifice. Engelhard described Gotschalk as a lay monk, suggesting he may have lived in the monastery with the monks but was not ordained. Gotschalk’s vision of monks and laybrothers together in the kingdom of God suggests their spiritual equality, irrespective of ordination and degrees of literacy. His vision of himself at the altar made him a mother who had nurtured his soul to become worthy to receive the Eucharist. Even more, his vision of Mary depicts a woman at the altar who sacrificed her son and herself rather than acting as a priest who reproduced Christ’s sacrifice. Monks, nuns, and laybrothers alike could seek to become such mothers. Engelhard was not alone in linking Mary with the Eucharist. As Anne Clark has argued, Hildegard of Bingen compared the Incarnation of Christ

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in Mary to a priest’s confection of the Eucharist, making Mary a model for priestly activity but explaining nonetheless why female weakness and infirmity made women unfit for the priesthood. Similarly, Elizabeth of Scho¨nau’s first diary of her visions depict Mary dressed in priestly vestments and standing at the altar, although later visions, recorded after Elizabeth developed closer relationships with male clergy, instead emphasize the ministry of priests. Both women resisted the division of society into clerical and lay states, but both ultimately refused to upend existing hierarchies.79 Engelhard’s tale of Mary with a knife provides a similar association of Mary with eucharistic ideas, but he does not make Mary a priest. His message was not directed at women alone, for his stories resonated with Bernard’s sermons, with the monastic theologians’ stress on spiritual communion, and with the Cıˆteaux illumination of the deacon’s offering to Daniel. By drawing on eucharistic imagery to articulate a maternal sacrifice that both nuns and monks could enact, Engelhard downplayed the importance of priestly consecration and instead emphasized the ways the audiences of his stories could develop their own sacramental connections between themselves and their God.

Seeing and Interpreting Engelhard presented his last two stories about the Eucharist as a pair. One, he thought, demonstrated divine justice and should elicit terror; the other demonstrated divine mercy and elicited hope. In these two longer tales, the narrator not only offers a striking image but also provides the commentary that teaches the audiences what the protagonists themselves do not recognize. Both stories touch on mistreatment of the host but, like Engelhard’s other tales, they focus more on encouraging their audiences to see and interpret than on imparting doctrine and proper behavior. Again, they blend Biblical passages and imagery with the events in the story so as to remind the audiences that a consecrated host always signifies more than it shows. They demonstrate that Engelhard understood that the reliability of sight depended on the spiritual condition of the observer. By reinforcing what people already knew, the stories celebrated the knowledge that the narrator and audiences shared. The first story in the pair depicts the difficulty of discerning whether a host is consecrated. Engelhard told of young man who had been raised at Langheim after his father converted but who left the monastery to marry and

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become a shepherd. After wolves ravaged his sheep, the shepherd stole a consecrated host and carried it in his basket, hoping it would protect his flock. In an act of divine punishment, lightning struck the shepherd. While dying, he confessed his theft to his wife and told her to take the host to his father at Langheim. The father, hearing of the circumstances of his son’s death, called on Engelhard to help. This is unusual; Cistercian authors do not usually appear as actors in their stories. Engelhard described himself with his usual self-deprecation, criticizing his initial reaction and confessing that, upon hearing the news, “I was afraid and advice flew from me.”80 He did not realize that the bread that the wife and a companion carried to Langheim had been consecrated, and he suggested that the pair return it to the church from which it had been stolen. The wife’s companion refused. “Heaven forbid that I should carry back what was recently carried here,” he told Engelhard, “for rather I was carried by it. It did not come here with me but I was borne, now flying through the air, now walking, so quickly that I will lose my senses unless I deposit my burden.”81 This miraculous movement made clear to the assembled monks that the wafer was consecrated and that it wished to remain at Langheim. In response, the entire abbey formed a procession and, with hymns and praise, they carried the host into the church and placed it in a vessel “as if it had been secured there by a priest, as is the custom.”82 This story offers a number of messages. It creates a contrast between the monastery and secular society, for the shepherd fed his flock but “alas, was separated from the flock of God.”83 The monks of Langheim were the true lambs of God, but they were protected by the presence of God in their church rather than by a host in a shepherd’s basket. The story also emphasizes the importance of treating the Eucharist properly, for as Engelhard lamented, not only was this “most sad body of the Lord” carried in a shepherd’s rag, but it had been handled by a woman.84 The restoration of the host on the altar sparked the community’s celebration. Yet Engelhard’s inability to discern that the host had been consecrated is central to the story, as is the monks’ gradual recognition of what the audience already knew. The story warns against mistreatment, but it also rebounds to praise Langheim as the place that Christ knew he would be properly treated. It teaches its audiences to imagine a Cistercian monastery as a place that connected heaven and earth through the presence of the host on its altar. In Engelhard’s final story about the Eucharist, the pattern is reversed. Rather than depicting someone with faith who could not recognize the

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unseen reality of a consecrated host, this last tale depicts someone without faith who saw the reality of the Eucharist but could not understand it. A Jewish man from Cologne, curious about the Eucharist, took communion by pretending to be a Christian.85 Taking the host from his mouth to better observe it, he discovered it was a child. Simultaneously describing what the man saw and offering an interpretation that blends the actions in the story with language from the Book of Isaiah, Engelhard described this host as “a snow-white boy: a boy none other than he of whom a voice told when he was born: ‘For us a child is born, for us a son is given’ [Isaiah 9:6].”86 The Jewish man was stupefied. His vision did not disappear; instead, a radiant light extended from the baby into heaven. Engelhard again supplied the Christian meaning that the Jew did not understand, writing that the light “testified that he who illuminated all men had come into this world. For that splendor demonstrated the paternal glory, and it said through the voice of the father, ‘you are my son, and today I have begotten you’ [Psalm 2:7].”87 The man did not know what do with the child. Engelhard’s language oscillates between the man’s thoughts and the narrator’s commentary. “Should he once more devour it?” Engelhard asked. “But already that mouth had been an extraordinary tomb for him, from which he rose from the dead, although he did not die.” Eventually, the Jewish man buried the child in a Christian cemetery, hoping, in Engelhard’s paraphrase of the Gospels, that it would “lie hidden under a bushel, even though that boy did not want this, preferring to be placed on a candlestick so that he would illuminate all who are in his house.”88 Every time the Jew returned to the grave, he saw the light ascending to heaven. The third time the man visited the grave, his fear changed. Now he “feared the face of the Lord who before had been the face of an enemy.”89 By entering a process that transformed fear to love, he also recognized what Engelhard and his readers already understood—that the baby was the Messiah whom they thought the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible foretold. The man ran to the local priests, confessed, and promised to be baptized, and the Christians in Cologne followed him back to the grave. There they too saw the splendor “lighting the world as if this alone were a light under a bushel,” and they lifted what all now recognized as “the body of Jesus” from the ground. Still, “it appeared to the faithful in the form handled in church while it appeared to the Jew in the form of a child as before.” Celebrating, weeping for joy, and singing hymns of praise, they carried the host into the church. There, they saw the light from heaven condense into the priest’s hands and

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return to heaven, accompanied by a small celestial voice and an earthly chorus. Thus, Engelhard concluded, “Jewish error was confounded and the Christian faith was glorified.” The Jewish man and his family converted, becoming in Engelhard’s words, “the sons of Abraham through faith as they had been sons in the flesh.”90 This story of a Jew from Cologne offers lessons about seeing with faith. Although repeating standard anti-Jewish tropes about Jewish blindness, it does not express the explicit accusations of Jewish host abuse that started to appear in the late thirteenth century.91 Instead, Engelhard used the figure of the Jew to explore issues of interpretation that were important to his Christian audiences. Engelhard’s Jew was initially confronted with a series of corporeal visions, including a baby that he saw, touched, and buried. He saw but he did not understand, for he did not recognize that the baby was the child from Isaiah’s prophecy. By describing the child using Isaiah’s words, Engelhard implied from the beginning that the Jewish reading of the Prophets was flawed and that vision proved the truth of the Christian interpretation. The conversion of the Jewish man and his family reinforces the story’s supersessionist position, for the family became “sons of Abraham through faith as they had been sons through the flesh.”92 The old covenant is replaced by the new, the letter of the law is interpreted according to the spirit, and Christians become the true sons of Abraham. By describing a story of a Jew who learned to see with Christian faith, Engelhard’s account demonstrates that his audiences too could learn to view their sensory experiences through a lens of faith and recognize an invisible reality in visible signs. Like the man who drank the blood from the chalice, the Jew saw too concretely. He was shocked by the child and confused about how to treat it, but he did not recognize it as Jesus. For the Christian audience of the story, the vision fostered imagination by eliciting mental images that the audience could interpret and understand. The protagonist of the story may have seen a “visible sign,” but the author and the audience, with their knowledge of Christian doctrine and Christian exegesis, could instead recognize the sign’s meanings and understand the complex symbolic meanings layered within the sacrament.93 In both the story of the shepherd and the Jew, the process of learning to see and interpret is communal rather than solitary. Although the man was alone when he first saw the baby and the light, he did not comprehend it alone. Only when the Christians at the end assembled “in spontaneous devotion” did they together see the host and the celestial light moving from the

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grave to the priest’s hands to heaven. These different modes of sight emphasize the contrast between the community of the faithful and those outside.94 The Jew may have disguised himself as a Christian but he “was not like the others.” In fact, Engelhard noted, “the wolf had put on the skin of a sheep and had transformed himself into a sheep, undertaking with it the bread of life, but not for life because he was without faith.”95 Engelhard’s images resonate with those in his previous story, for neither the shepherd’s sheep nor the Jew were the sheep of God. The differences between Jews and Christians, as well as between consecrated and unconsecrated hosts, are not always apparent but are internal and depend on faith. Unlike the nearly converted Jew, who still saw the host as a baby, the Christians in Cologne understood its nature even thought they saw it as bread. At the end of both stories, communal rituals and the common vision of light ascending to heaven are available only to “the faithful.” The light might confound Jewish blindness and confirm Christian faith, but it does so only for those who already know how to understand it. Engelhard composed his story of Jewish conversion a few decades before the statutes of the Fourth Lateran Council required that Jewish difference be made visible on clothing. The churchmen of the Fourth Lateran, like Caesarius of Heisterbach and his novice, wanted hidden qualities to be made manifest with visible signs. Engelhard’s stories also demonstrate this interest in corporeal sight. Unlike Conrad of Eberbach, Engelhard did not contrast faith with vision and rely only on the effects of communal consensus, but nor did he accept Caesarius’s at times confused position that sight alone could reinforce faith. Instead he offered visible signs that he embedded in a narrative interpretative framework to demonstrate to his audiences what they already knew. The structure of his stories reminded them that the meanings of signs were shaped and reinforced by the communal liturgy, discipline, and exegetical traditions of a religious life that Cistercian nuns and monks shared. His tales taught a faith in the Eucharist that depended on the worthiness of a person’s own spiritual offering, but they also assumed that this worthiness depended on spiritual progress in a life devoted to the imitation of Christ.

Teaching the Eucharist By using the epistemological problem of the Eucharist to introduce his collection of stories for the nuns of Wechterswinkel, Engelhard gave his composition a theme that distinguished it from other Cistercian collections of

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exempla. Cistercian story collectors told multiple stories about the Eucharist, but most did not focus as tightly as did Engelhard on the problem of seeing and interpreting the visible signs of an invisible reality. They also placed more emphasis on the role of the priest in performing the mass. Like Engelhard’s composition, the other Cistercian story collections demonstrate a monastic interest in the spiritual condition of the recipient, but they also expand their concerns to educate their audiences about the proper administration and treatment of the Eucharist as well as its reception and interpretation. Their willingness to collect tales from written as well as oral sources, and from nonCistercian as well as Cistercian ones, contrasts with Engelhard’s concentration on the spiritual development of the recipient and his lack of interest in priests and their powers of consecration. All of the major Cistercian collections of exempla from the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries contain stories about the Eucharist. The collections vary in the proportions of Cistercian to non-Cistercian protagonists as well as in their reliance on written as well as oral sources. About a third of the material in the Collectaneum focuses on the Eucharist, but this includes a set of treatises as well as stories; only a quarter of its eucharistic tales concern Cistercian monks.96 By comparison, nearly half of Herbert of Clairvaux’s stories about the Eucharist come from tales that circulated within the order, and many of his non-Cistercian tales are more recent stories rather than retellings of late antique accounts.97 As befits a collection that focuses on the history of the Cistercians, nearly all of Conrad of Eberbach’s stories about the Eucharist concern Cistercian monks and laybrothers; many are elaborations of tales from Herbert’s collection.98 The Dialogue on Miracles, which Caesarius of Heisterbach assembled after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, resembles the Collectaneum in its interest in combining stories with theological discussion, but rather than offering a haphazard mix of stories and treatises, it instead provides a dialogue between master and novice that serves as a catechism. Caesarius entitled one of the twelve books of his work “On the Body and Blood of Christ,” but less than a third of its sixty-six stories originate in a Cistercian environment. Even more than the others, Caesarius articulated a concern for the process of transformation, the priestly powers of consecration, and the education of priests and the laity. His narrator told the novice that he could find a more complete account of eucharistic doctrine “in sententiis,” probably referring to Peter Lombard’s Sentences that had by then become the foundational theological textbook, found in monastic as well as in university libraries.99 Despite the variations in organization and

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content, however, these collections reflect a characteristic Cistercian concern for the practice of the sacrament both within and outside their monasteries and the monks’ desire to encourage the proper respect for the Eucharist and proper behavior by the priests who officiated. As did Engelhard’s stories, other Cistercian tales depicting visions of the Eucharist stress the importance of the spiritual state of the recipient and the importance of receiving communion in a state of grace. Unlike Engelhard’s tales, however, they are more likely to encourage proper behavior than to offer lessons in how to see and interpret, and they often emphasize the authority of the priest in deciding whether a recipient was worthy.100 They describe both monks and members of the laity who took communion despite priestly prohibitions. A woman who ignored her priest and approached the altar felt a burning inside her and died with the host still intact in her mouth, while a monk whom Bernard of Clairvaux had forbidden to communicate could not swallow after he joined his brothers at the altar.101 Still other tales rebuke those who disrupted their communities. One story from secular society, repeated frequently in Cistercian collections, describes a parishioner who regularly saw Christ embrace his priest during mass until the priest’s dog killed a neighbor’s pig. When the two men began to argue, Christ disappeared until the priest did penance.102 Another story portrays a monk who tasted honeyed cake at communion when his monastery was at peace but tasted a bitterness when a disruptive monk dared to take communion.103 Similarly, when a monk begrudgingly assisted at a mass celebrated by a monastic priest whom he had scorned, the consecrated host had the texture of flesh and tasted like liver.104 Visions of the Eucharist could be rewards as well as rebukes. A monk devoted to John the Baptist saw Christ and John the Baptist during the mass, another holy monk had a vision of Bernard assisting St. Malachai at the altar on Malachai’s feast day, and a priest received a vision because he cried tears of compunction while celebrating.105 Occasionally, the recipient of a vision remained unsure as to its purpose. According to Caesarius, when Abbot Daniel of Scho¨nau saw blood in the chalice, he hoped that it was for his consolation and not his condemnation.106 At times, a vision might signify the holiness of someone other than the visionary. Caesarius told of a laybrother who saw Jesus appear in the hands of his abbot as the abbot consecrated the host, and he recounted another tale in which a laybrother observed a dove fly from the chalice to the cross and then into the bread while the abbot celebrated mass.107

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Although both monks and the laity could receive visions of praise and rebuke, the tales with monastic protagonists put these visions in the context of monastic formation and repentance. The monk who could not swallow the Eucharist after Bernard of Clairvaux’s prohibition confessed, was punished, and received absolution; another monk who could not swallow the host because he had abandoned his monastery eventually returned, received his tonsure, and then could take communion.108 In yet another story, a monk who showed little compunction for his sins saw Christ performing the mass and the chalice fill with Mary Magdalene’s tears of repentance.109 At times these stories, like Engelhard’s, downplay the presence of the priest. A laybrother who received Maundy Thursday communion without enthusiasm became eager to communicate after remembering another brother’s vision, while another laybrother who possessed goods without permission confessed when his Easter communion so felt like a coal within him that he threw up ashes.110 In comparison, lay and clerical protagonists who received visions as punishments seldom reformed. Rather than offering hope for improvement, their fates became warnings to the audiences who heard them. Stories with monastic protagonists at times depict a spiritual communion that also bypassed the role of the priest in transforming the physical elements. A laybrother who obeyed a command to stay at his grange rather than go to the church for mass received a vision that revealed the rite in the monastery; Caesarius remarked that, “although he was absent in body, he was present in spirit, and he communicated spiritually even if not sacramentally.”111 Similarly, some Cistercian stories emphasize the importance of the daily office over the mass. According to Conrad of Eberbach, the abbot Henry of Marcy told his friends that if he had to choose between saying the penitential psalms and performing mass on Easter or the Nativity, he would choose the psalms.112 Twice, Conrad described two holy monks as “offering themselves as a living sacrifice,” thus enacting the sacrifice of a contrite heart described in Psalm 50.113 Yet, by the time Caesarius collected his stories, this understanding of spiritual communion had shifted. Rather than depicting the sacrifice of a contrite heart, Caesarius told a series of stories about laybrothers and religious women who received communion directly from Jesus. Befitting his interest in materiality, he insisted that they still received the the physical sacrament; in two cases, the wafer disappeared from the altar.114 Many of the Cistercian stories that originated outside the monastery describe the mistreatment of the host and the sinful behavior of priests. In their concern for the mistreatment of the host, Engelhard’s last two stories

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echo elements in other Cistercian tales, but Engelhard’s accounts taught their audiences interpretation more than proper behavior. Cistercian authors may have preferred nonmonastic stories for such topics to avoid presenting behaviors that reflected badly on their order. Some of their tales about mistreatment are accusatory, such as the stories about consecrated hosts that were illicitly removed from a church but proclaimed their presence by shining or turning into flesh. Others show animals revering a host placed in their presence; an oft-told account describes bees constructing a wax cathedral around a host that had been placed in their hive.115 Stories about sinful priests are even more accusatory. During the mass, observers saw weeping crucifixes, drops of blood on the corporeal, or babies with darkened faces who refused to enter the mouths of priests. 116 Sometimes these observers were Cistercian monks. In one story, repeated in four Cistercian collections, an unnamed monk assisted at a mass in a parish church while a sinful priest officiated. The monk saw Christ standing above the altar with a sad face. Christ stood in front of the chalice when the priest faced the congregation, but he stood behind it when the priest faced the altar so as to escape the priest’s bad breath.117 In another, Caesarius of Heisterbach told of a monk of Ebrach who saw a sinful priest chewing coal at the moment of reception.118 Such stories, while criticizing priestly misbehavior, also demonstrated Christ’s presence despite the priests’ sins. Caesarius made this lesson explicit, noting in his commentary to the novice that the sacrament is effective because of grace, not through the merits of the priest. Presumably, monks occasionally needed to be reminded of this long-standing theological issue. If there were times that Cistercian priests celebrated unworthily it was not something the Cistercian exempla collectors publicized. Stories about difficulties in performing the mass, however, could be set either within a monastery or outside it. In one monastic tale, an abbot swallowed a spider that had fallen in the chalice; it emerged later from his body. In another, a monastic priest did not have water at the altar with which to wash his hands. Both stories reassured their audiences despite the mishaps.119 The stories with secular protagonists were less likely to offer reassurance. Caesarius’s collection describes mistakes in the performance of the mass more than do the others, reflecting a growing concern over improper handling of the consecrated elements in the years after the Fourth Lateran Council. He told stories about overturning the pyx, dropping the host, spilling wine from the chalice, baking impure wafers for consecration, and performing the mass without proper ordination.120 Yet also more than other story collectors,

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Caesarius described a new visionary devotion to the Eucharist, especially among religious women who could see the results of the priests’ actions or who received communion directly from Christ without priests as intermediaries.121 This new female piety, coupled with an emphasis on the special nature of clerical ordination and the proper handling of consecrated elements, reinforced both the growing distinctions between clerical and female religiosities but also demonstrated the symbiotic relationships that developed between priests and religious women.122 Engelhard’s writings do not accentuate the priest’s confection of the Eucharist. They neither depict the proper behavior of priests and the laity nor show a specifically female form of eucharistic devotion. None of the recipients or observers of eucharistic visions in his collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel were women, although Engelhard did express a concern that the shepherd’s abused host had been handled by the shepherd’s wife. Even Engelhard’s life of Mechthild is unusual among late twelfth-century vitae of holy women in its lack of emphasis on eucharistic devotion.123 Other than Mechthild’s death scene in which Mechthild accepted an invisible host from the hands of angels, Engelhard described Mechthild’s devotion to the Eucharist only once, and even then, he portrayed it as a kind of spiritual reception, since Mechthild “frequently accepted that flesh of the paschal lamb, the lamb bearing the sins of the world, in remission of her sins, eating it more with her mind than her teeth, and preparing herself to be a clean temple for it as much in her heart as her body.”124 In the same way that other Cistercians had used eucharistic imagery to depict monastic life, Engelhard employed such language to describe Mechthild’s care for her community and Christ’s love for her. In fact, Engelhard placed her in the position of a priest, claiming that, as abbess, she “had Christ feeding the flock with her with that bread that descends from heaven and gives life to the world.”125 Similarly, in Mechthild’s most famous miracle, she received water transformed into wine rather than viewing wine changed to blood, thus experiencing Christ’s hospitality at Cana rather than his sacrifice.126 Only later, when the brothers at Diessen added to Engelhard’s life a scene in which Count Berthold donated a tithe, did they also insist that Mechthild desired a portion of the tithe be used to supply wafers for the Eucharist to the neighboring churches.127 This thirteenth-century addition demonstrates an interest in the physical qualities of the sacrament that Engelhard’s emphasis on spiritual communion had downplayed.

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Conclusion Engelhard ended his story of the conversion of the Jewish man from Cologne by explaining that he told his stories to praise Christ. It was Christ, he thought, who shaped the spiritual condition of his stories’ protagonists and those in his audience. Christ, he wrote, “carries away the doubts from those tempted by unbelief, he inspires fear in the unbelieving, he discloses the weariness of the negligent, he sharpens the zeal of the industrious, and finally, he increases the incentive for perfect love in those who are fervent.”128 In his Dialogue on Miracles, Caesarius of Heisterbach made a similar point, telling the novice that God deigns to show the truth of the sacraments to console the good, strengthen those who waiver, and warn those who live badly.129 Just as the Jew from Cologne had moved from unbelief to fear to love, so Engelhard expected his audiences to make a similar progression and to develop, as the Benedictine Rule articulates, “the perfect love that casts out fear.” His stories address the doubts and questions of the protagonists who saw visions and the audiences who heard about them, but these doubts were triggered more by questions of personal worthiness and disposition than by the transformation of the host. His stories taught his audiences to recognize what they already knew and, like the monk Gotschalk, to foster Christ’s likeness in their souls. As tales offered to communities of monks and nuns, it was not vision but rather an assumed common culture of interpretation that addressed the questions of their audiences. Through the interaction between this common culture and the imagery and language of the stories themselves, Engelhard taught both nuns and monks to see, to interpret, and to have faith. Like the other Cistercian story collectors, Engelhard sought to maintain a monastic culture that stressed individual virtue and personal formation. His stories about the Eucharist link his protagonists’ visions to this communally constructed faith. Yet Engelhard did not describe the monastic community as reinforcing a faith in the unseen but instead offered stories that interpreted visible signs so as to transmit Cistercian culture to people at a distance. Furthermore, by teaching Cistercian ideas about the Eucharist to the nuns of Wechterswinkel, Engelhard shared elements of his culture with a nonsacerdotal audience. Earlier Cistercians such as Bernard of Clairvaux had downplayed a sacerdotal religiosity, but by the time Engelhard wrote, in the last years of the twelfth century, the preservation of these older ideas began to

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create something new. Engelhard ignored the emerging status distinction between clerical monks and religious women and wrote to monks and nuns as if a single social group sharing the same interests. Rather than providing the nuns of Wechterswinkel with examples of female devotion to the consecrated host, he instead suggested that their own sacrifice and personal development could be an offering to God, and he made the development of an individual conscience a sacramental process that linked visible signs on earth to their reality in heaven.

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Imagining Cistercian Holiness

One of the most famous stories in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogue on Miracles is his account of Cistercians sheltered under Mary’s cloak. Caesarius described a vision in which a pious monk could not find the Cistercians among the multiplicity of religious orders in heaven. Troubled by their absence, the monk asked Mary why the most devoted of her servants had been excluded from her presence. Mary opened her mantle to show that she embraced a multitude of Cistercian monks, laybrothers, and nuns under her arms. Other religious orders adopted this image, and it became the source for later iconography depicting the Madonna of Mercies who protects humanity under her cloak.1 This initial Cistercian expression, however, demonstrates Mary’s special patronage of the Cistercians and a confidence in Cistercian salvation. It implies that the monks’ devotion to Mary on earth would lead to their privileged place in heaven.2 Engelhard of Langheim also recounted tales that asserted the special holiness of the Cistercian order. His story of a monk’s heavenly vision, however, articulates a different perspective on Cistercian salvation than that of his contemporaries. Engelhard’s tale combines elements eventually found in Caesarius’s account with versions of a story recorded in both the Collectaneum and the Exordium magnum. A tale in those collections describes a newly converted regular canon who found Cistercian life too difficult but was dissuaded from abandoning his monastery by a vision in which Cistercian monks were arrayed before God in Judgment. In his vision, the monks were invited to enter heaven, but the regular canon found his path obstructed. Engelhard’s account was similar, but he downplayed the Cistercians’ salvation at the Day of Judgment to emphasize a disjunction between earthly

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appearance and heavenly reality. He located his tale at Langheim and described a regular canon who expected Langheim to be paradise. Rather than planning to leave because he found Cistercian life difficult, Engelhard’s protagonist instead felt disappointed by the Cistercians. He thought he would live at Langheim as an angel but he instead encountered monks “who laughed, became angry, joked, and did all the things that are typical of men.”3 The night before his planned departure, he had a vision of heaven in which he became “another Daniel,” standing before God (Daniel 7:10). Rather than seeing God in Judgment, he viewed people of all professions and orders, “each distinct in form and spirit and indeed happy before God but mixed by a confusion of orders. Just as in a marketplace, they were borne by unstable steps to uncertain places—now here and now there.” Like Caesarius’s monk, the regular canon could not find the Cistercians. Finally, looking to the right hand of God, he saw one group, “gracious in looks, splendid in dress, recently shaved, and clothed in the form of our order, and hooded as if in a tranquil breeze.” They were “acting in silence and peace, standing with discipline, praising God and exalting God in their throats.”4 Upon waking, the man decided to remain a Cistercian, joining his brothers in their earthly prayers. These Cistercian tales, with their visions of heaven, asked their audiences to imagine connections between heaven and earth that confirmed the special holiness of Cistercian monasticism. Embedded in these interrelated stories, however, were three different ways of conceptualizing the sacrality of a monastic community. The regular canon in Engelhard’s story thought that the inhabitants of monasteries could be angels and that, through the act of conversion, he would live in a heaven on earth. Caesarius, Conrad of Eberbach, and the author of the Collectaneum instead emphasized the difficult and penitential qualities of their religious life on earth. Rather than depicting the monastery as heaven, they promised a heavenly reward at the end of time. Engelhard suggested a third option. His story demonstrates a heavenly reality that existed concurrently with the Cistercians’ earthly experiences but differed from them. Although the monks’ disorder did not resemble the behavior of angels, the regular canon’s vision of heaven taught him that Cistercian behavior nonetheless also existed in an orderly form in heaven. Engelhard’s stories seldom blend moral lessons with eschatological promises.5 Rather than offering a future salvation, they described the challenges of life on earth. Engelhard recounted tales of monks who struggled to reform, and he even told stories about Cistercians who died badly. When he celebrated the Cistercians, as in his tale of the two necromancers, his praise

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was anything but effusive. All the dead necromancer could tell his living friend was that the Cistercian order had the fewest members in hell.6 Even the saintly apparitions in his stories cajoled and disciplined people on earth rather than interceding with God. Yet Engelhard still sought to convince his audiences of the superior holiness of Cistercian life. He did this by suggesting that the Cistercians’ penitential behaviors had heavenly qualities that gave their earthly practices transcendent meanings. By blending monastic customs with Biblical and liturgical images, his stories taught both men and women in Cistercian communities to conceptualize their spiritual reformation as connecting heaven to earth.

Constructing Cistercian Holiness Monasteries sacralize space. Their inhabitants describe their precincts as delimited by a boundary between the religious and the secular, and they live in such a way that their ritualized behaviors make the divine seem present to them. Some scholars of religion accept these self-descriptions at face value, finding religion where the divine erupts into everyday places. Others, more influenced by social scientific and anthropological approaches to the study of religion, argue that sacred places are culturally constructed and that both boundary-making and boundary-crossing reflect social relations, expressions of power and resistance, and feelings of embodiment and self-formation that the inhabitants themselves cannot always recognize. For still others, rituals and stories can invoke an imagined transcendence beyond lived space and time and make a space seem sacred.7 Medieval monasteries combined their liturgical prayers and disciplinary practices with their stories of holy people and patron saints to create sacred spaces that unfold in sacred time. Yet, as Engelhard’s account of the regular canon suggests, monasteries articulated their connections with the transcendent in multiple ways. At times they brought heaven to earth; at other times, they reminded their inhabitants that they would someday be in heaven; and sometimes they presented monastic practices as earthly signs of a heavenly reality. The religious experimentation in eleventh- and twelfth-century Europe created a competitive landscape in which monasteries vied for prominence. Expressions of monastic holiness had social and economic consequences. Religious communities had long persuaded potential benefactors to donate property and contribute their children by promising to assist the spiritual

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well-being of these donors in return. By the twelfth century, many newly formed communities expected their members to make their own decisions about conversion, and the project of persuasion shifted focus from families to young adults.8 Although women were still more likely than men to enter religious communities as children or adolescents, they too had more choices: the success of preachers who encouraged female repentance and created new women’s communities indicates the growing number of religious options for women.9 This competitive environment produced polemical letters, treatises, and stories that invoked comparisons, initiated rivalries, and articulated claims for superior forms of holiness in order to attract both recruits and property. The holiness of monastic life depended on a societal confidence in the intercession of the monks’ and nuns’ communal prayers and the actions of their patron saints. A standard trope portrayed monastic prayer on earth as participating in an angelic praise of God. The Benedictine Rule reminds its adherents that they pray in the sight of God and his angels, and numerous monastic stories depicted angels and monks singing together.10 The monastery of Cluny found this association of monks with angels especially important. Already by the tenth century, Cluniac monks considered their abbey as a holy place where monastic silence, chastity, and prayer mirrored the bearing of angels. Abbot Odo thought life at Cluny demonstrated that human behavior could be angelic, Peter Damian described Cluny’s abbot Hugh as an archangel who fostered an angelic life among his monks, and Ralph Glaber compared Cluny’s masses to the work of the angels.11 Patron saints also seemed to bring heaven to earth within a monastic enclosure. Monks created and elaborated the cults associated with their holy dead and developed centers for pilgrimages. They promoted saints’ shrines, controlled access to tombs and reliquaries, and claimed their own special ability to request saintly intercession, whether to heal pilgrims or to protect the goods of their monasteries. They invoked the presence of saints through their liturgies and processions, through their material representations of a saintly splendor in heaven, through their rituals of malediction, and through their narratives of saints’ lives and miracles.12 Tombs and reliquaries placed bones, hair, teeth, bits of cloth, or fragments of wood or iron in gold and jeweled cases that displayed the saint’s transcendent glory.13 The power to petition their saints and care for the dead enhanced and protected monastic property, created a communal identity, and formed a political critique that distinguished between the pious behavior of monastic benefactors and the disordered behavior of a monastery’s enemies.14

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The Cistercians retained the Benedictine practice of exchanging prayers for donations of land and revenue but, like many of the new monastic congregations of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they were more interested in the repentance of people who consciously chose to enter their communities than in the benefits that a community of angelic men and patron saints could offer the rest of society. Twelfth-century Cistercian monks dedicated their abbeys to the Virgin Mary and developed prayers and liturgies in her honor, but they did not foster public shrines. They continued to intercede for the dead with prayers and commemorative masses, but they also curtailed the offices for the dead and emphasized the importance of the canonical hours over individual masses. Initially, they even refused to bury non-Cistercians, although over the course of the twelfth century they relaxed this prohibition.15 Their sense of the holiness of their monasteries stemmed less from the presence of the holy dead and the power of monastic prayer and more from their conception of their abbeys as places inhabited by people committed to their own spiritual reformation.16 Bernard of Clairvaux was the preeminent spokesman for this Cistercian way of life. He aggressively recruited potential monks and proclaimed the Cistercians’ holiness. Cistercian literature presents Bernard as the order’s great missionary. His vita depicts him as the savior of a struggling Cıˆteaux, claiming he entered this new monastery with a crowd of friends and relatives and initiated the community’s growth.17 His writings, which circulated throughout the order, include correspondence with potential monks and sermons that exhorted Parisian students to convert. His letters to his nephew Robert and to Peter the Venerable of Cluny, and his Apologia addressed to William of St. Thierry, provoked decades of debate over monastic observances and interpretations of the Benedictine Rule. In trying to convince Robert to return to the Cistercians from Cluny, Bernard also acknowledged the challenge of convincing young men—many of whom came from aristocratic backgrounds—that there was a spiritual benefit to adopting a peasant’s life of rough clothes, harsh foods, hard beds, and manual labor. Through the habit of hard work, Bernard told his nephew, his difficult path would become easier and he would be joined in his efforts by Christ and his angels who would eventually lead him to victory.18 Bernard connected Cistercian asceticism to his ideas about divine love so tightly that his works simultaneously present moral exhortations and an eschatological confidence in the eventual salvation of all Cistercian monks. In letters and sermons that articulate a contrast between life in the monastery

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and the world outside, he showed monks and nuns how to imagine their life as a process of coming into contact with God and how to imagine a God who would assist them. Bernard encouraged his audiences to live on multiple levels and in multiple times simultaneously: to recognize the dissimilitude between earth and heaven, to consider the progression of sacred history, and to recollect earthly experiences so that, by transforming them, they could feel the presence of the divine. Bernard expressed this sense of divine presence through images and metaphors that always required further interpretation; divine contact stemmed from the daily victories and strivings of an individual within a community rather than from a single moment of illumination. Such contact seldom emerged through mystical or beatific visions. Rather, it developed through the interpretation and contemplation of Biblical texts, especially the Song of Songs, with which each monk performed his own reform and his love of God.19 As a result, Bernard’s writings constructed a Cistercian holiness from the penance and formation of individual monks, each of whom could link spiritual development to the presence of divine love in the soul and a hope for salvation. The stories that Cistercian monks told about Bernard of Clairvaux after his death and canonization reinforce the conception of Cistercian holiness that Bernard had done so much to create. The vitae that advocated for Bernard’s canonization present him as a saint for all of Christendom, but the monks at Clairvaux did not develop a public cult. Instead, they circulated a story describing their request to a dying Bernard that he not work posthumous miracles so that they could be left in peace.20 The Bernard who appears in the Cistercians’ collections of stories is the order’s missionary and pastor, a figure who continued to convince young men to join Clairvaux and to insist they stay there. Many of these tales record memories of Bernard’s care for his community more than his political and ecclesial importance. Bernard remained at Clairvaux after his death. He and his friend, the Irish archbishop Malachai, were buried in Clairvaux’s church beneath the high altar, and they at times appeared together in deathbed visions in which they continued their exhortations and offered hope.21 Bernard also become a guarantor of Cistercian salvation. The Collectaneum starts with two prefatory stories that describe Bernard preaching to his monks. According to one, Bernard reminded the brothers that their prayers joined angelic song in praise of God; according to the other, he insisted that even Judas would have been saved had he been a Cistercian.22 Other Cistercian story collections repeat and elaborate these accounts, employing Bernard to reinforce the order’s

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insistence on its preeminent sanctity. Even without a public cult, Bernard’s continued presence at Clairvaux created a connection between monastery and heaven that helped Cistercian monks imagine their eventual salvation.23 The Cistercians’ stories about Bernard did not guarantee salvation to all Cistercians equally. These tales originated at Clairvaux, and they remained especially popular among houses in Clairvaux’s affiliation.24 Even within Clairvaux, Bernard did not always show the same support for the laybrothers that he did for his monks. According to one story, he berated a dying laybrother for his presumption that he would enter into the Lord’s kingdom. The laybrother eventually convinced Bernard that he indeed had developed the virtues needed for his heavenly reward, but both the narrator’s voice and Bernard’s comments express surprise that an unlettered man could possess such humility and self-knowledge.25 Even more, there is no evidence for the ways twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Cistercian women remembered Bernard. By the middle of the thirteenth century, nuns such as those at Helfta found in Bernard’s writings inspiration for their own spirituality, and Gertrude the Great described a vision in which Bernard appeared to her.26 Bernard wrote to nuns and religious women, and these letters were preserved and recopied, but there are no twelfth-century stories that depict Bernard as supporting the sanctity and encouraging the salvation of Cistercian women. Engelhard’s collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel provides an opportunity to explore Cistercian stories collected outside the orbit of Clairvaux. They illustrate the construction of a Cistercian holiness without recourse to Bernard. As did other Cistercian authors, Engelhard recognized the competitiveness of his religious environment. His stories depict monks who moved from one religious community to another, they describe abbots who sought to retain the monks who found Cistercian life difficult, and they assert the special sanctity of the Cistercian order. Still, Engelhard’s compliments tend to be backhanded. In one story he praised all orders, since “the net of Gospel, set in the sea, draws every kind of fish towards faith, for each religio brings in its catch and drags it towards a way of life,” but he concluded by asserting “our order is now not the least in its catch, claiming many for itself.”27 Similarly, he thought “in other orders more sins are found and less virtue.”28 Whereas other Cistercian authors offered negative moral lessons using accounts of laybrothers or people from non-Cistercian communities, Engelhard populated his negative examples with Cistercian monks. Some of his protagonists gradually reformed, but others died badly. In justifying his inclusion of one particularly horrific story, he reminded his audiences that

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“even among us, a snake lies hidden in the grass, whose head the sons of Eve nonetheless crush whenever it raises its head to do harm,” and he concluded, “Let he who wishes both marvel and bring slander but he should answer to himself that even Satan was among the sons of God, that even Paradise did not lack a serpent, that even Judas was a fellow-apostle of Peter, and that the Father wished that weeds be grown among the wheat right up to the harvest. In the end, the net of the evangelists does not separate the fish in the sea but on the shore: it separates the good from the bad amidst the angels.”29 This appeal to the mixed quality of life on earth questioned the inevitability of Cistercian salvation, and it exacerbated the problem of knowing whether a difficult penitential life on earth would lead to heaven. Engelhard’s stories built on the uncertain quality of life on earth. Rather than unambiguously proclaiming the angelic character of Cistercian monasticism or looking toward a salvation promised in the future, his stories offered signs to help his audience imagine how monastic life created ongoing connections between earth and heaven. The penitential behaviors that shaped spiritual growth produced material whose appearance on earth could be interpreted as a visible sign of its heavenly analogue. Furthermore, Engelhard understood Cistercian monasteries to be places filled with imperfect people but where heavenly visitors might scold sinners into reformation. As a result, his stories created a monastic sacred space based more on the sacramental imaginings of his protagonists and audiences than on a conception of either a heaven on earth or a salvation to come.

Labor and Prayer Medieval monasteries often employed physical objects to symbolize links with heaven. Reliquaries associate saints with their physical remains, and the presence of a consecrated host, either reserved on the altar or confected through a private mass, makes Christ’s presence immanent. Both relics and the consecrated host were embedded in medieval liturgical practices, textual commemorations, and exegetical interpretations that joined them to a heavenly realm that could only be imagined, not seen. Engelhard’s stories neither describe relics nor tell many stories of saints, and only the first five tales employ the Eucharist to connect heaven with Cistercian communities. The remainder suggest that the Cistercians’ observances, especially their practices of labor and prayer, produced matter with sacramental qualities. Like relics

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and the Eucharist, these products of labor and prayer offered visible signs that looked one way in a monastery but existed in their true form in heaven. Engelhard’s stories taught his audiences to interpret these signs in the context of the Cistercians’ exegetical and liturgical culture and to imagine the reality they signified. By encouraging connections between the earthly behaviors that reformed the self and their heavenly analogues, they articulate a Cistercian holiness that was applicable to a nonsacerdotal audience of nuns and monks. Engelhard presented both labor and prayer as productive work. Their kinship had roots in the Benedictine Rule’s requirement that monks both work and pray. Many monastic communities in the central Middle Ages understood the performance of the liturgy as work, and they considered agricultural labor the responsibility of a subject peasantry. The Cistercians, in comparison, insisted that monks live off the products of their own manual labor. Even after they instituted a laybrotherhood that became responsible for most of the order’s agricultural production, Cistercian authors described manual labor and their order’s refusal to hold lands with peasant tenures as part of their interpretation of the Benedictine Rule. This labor became a marker that distinguished them from other monastic communities, and they answered criticisms that they curtailed time at prayer and mass in order to do the work of peasants by explaining that their labor was a part of a voluntary life of austerity and penance.30

Penitential and Productive Labor For many Cistercian authors, the penitential quality of manual labor distinguished it from prayer. Whereas prayer connected monks in their church choir to angels in heaven, labor seemed a form of earthly repentance that eventually led to rest in heaven. Labor often formed a triad with vigils and fasting as a way of disciplining the flesh.31 Bernard of Clairvaux described labor as a penance that restored fallen humanity through a voluntary conformity to the labor and suffering of Christ. Those who chose to do physical work, Bernard thought, opened their mind to repentance.32 In a sermon for Good Friday, he distinguished between those who worked out of necessity or in order to satisfy their desires and those who labored voluntary, and he insisted that only those who voluntarily chose a life of poverty and abandoned all things to follow Christ could conform themselves to Jesus’ labor and

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pain.33 Cistercian authors recognized that voluntary manual labor was difficult for aristocratic men unaccustomed to agricultural tasks. William of St. Thierry remembered that Bernard once cried at the harvest because he did not know how to use his scythe.34 Engelhard agreed that labor reformed the self, but he considered this work productive as well as penitential. His unique rendition of one of the best-known stories about Cistercian work illustrates his perspective. The story describes Mary and her companions visiting Clairvaux while the monks gathered the harvest.35 It appears in all the major Cistercian collections, although with small but significant variations. Most versions incorporate Bernard’s ideas and consider manual labor as a form of voluntary penance. Engelhard, however, offered a strikingly different rendition that provides a complex meditation on the nature of voluntary and necessary labor and the ways in which the products of work could signify a reformed self. The story collectors associated with Clairvaux told the story of Mary and the harvesters to emphasize the penitential actions of aristocratic men who worked as if they were peasants. In Clairvaux’s Collectaneum, a monk observed three women walking in the fields where the monks labored. When the monk confronted them, he discovered that they were Mary, Elizabeth, and Mary Magdalene, come to oversee the monks’ work and to prevent fraudulent labor by helping the monks guard against grumbling and temptation.36 When Herbert of Clairvaux retold this tale a few years later, he celebrated the monks’ willing penance rather than warning against grumbling. According to Herbert, the monastic observer could discern the interior disposition of the workers, and he rejoiced that “so many wise, noble, and elegant men, at that very moment, exposed themselves to labor and toil for the love of Christ.”37 Only after the observer praised the monks’ work did he see the women walk across the fields. In Herbert’s account, the women moved from the fields to the cloister where they spread their grace among monks and laybrothers alike. The Exordium magnum follows Herbert in celebrating the eager labor of the monks, although Conrad’s observer did not see the women enter the cloister. Instead, he watched them mingle among the monks and laybrothers in the fields.38 Caesarius of Heisterbach, who claimed the story encouraged his conversion, substituted Anne for Elizabeth, and he described the women as wiping the sweat from the brows of the laboring monks and fanning them with their sleeves.39 None of these stories, however, were concerned with the monks’ harvest or their agricultural production. Whether they expressed a concern about

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grumbling or celebrated the monks’ efforts, they focused on the toil that conformed the monks to Christ. Engelhard also employed an apparition of Mary to reflect on the nature of the Cistercians’ labor.40 His visionary, however, was not a monk standing apart from the workers but rather the cellarer—the monastic official responsible for a monastery’s economic welfare and the one who often supervised the laybrothers. The vision occurred at the end of the day, after the cellarer paid the hired laborers, put the tools away, and entered the monastery. Since the brothers were already asleep in the dormitory, the cellarer decided to rest in the cloister, making a pillow for himself out of his robe. Mary appeared just before he fell asleep, again accompanied by two other women. She held a vase to her nose as if smelling its scent. Like the observer in the other versions, the cellarer asked the women who they were, what they wanted, and why they entered an area forbidden to women. Engelhard’s Mary responded. She identified herself, reminding the cellarer that she was the patron of the Cistercian order and that all its members belonged to her. Furthermore, she explained her vase. She had spent the day collecting the monks’ sweat, since “it has the most pleasant smell for me, and it is certainly worthy for my son and will return the highest reward.”41 What looked like sweat on earth, Mary implied, was really perfume in heaven. Not even Caesarius of Heisterbach, whose later account describes Mary as wiping the sweat from the brows of hot workers, gave sweat this transcendent character. For Caesarius, labor was still penance.42 Engelhard, on the other hand, thought labor productive and made sweat into a perfume that was an offering to God. By asking its audiences to imagine sweat as perfume, Engelhard’s story raises new questions about the spiritual value of work. Bernard of Clairvaux described penitential labor as holy because high-status men voluntarily chose to live as peasants in imitation of the earthly sufferings of Christ. All labor produces sweat, but does all labor produce perfume for Jesus? Engelhard’s cellarer asked Mary this question. “How great is our labor for you which is not so much done out of voluntary devotion as out of the necessity of poverty?” he demanded. Mary responded with another question. “Have you not heard that what gives pleasure [voluptas] receives a penalty while duty earns the reward?” she asked. She explained further: “If duty receives the reward, what is voluntary [voluntas] now receives a part. But whether out of necessity or voluntarily, what you do is mine. I claim all of your work for myself, and what I receive, I remunerate.” Mary then disappeared and the cellarer, “refreshed in hope, comforted in faith, and willing to work,” fell asleep. He

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recounted his vision to his community the next day, and all the monks were inspired to “toil and sweat” so that Mary could fill her vase.43 This remarkable exchange between Mary and the cellarer rejects Bernard of Clairvaux’s argument that labor has spiritual value only if voluntary. It offers a more egalitarian view of work in which those who work voluntarily and those who work out of necessity are both rewarded. It is unclear whom Engelhard had in mind when the cellarer asked his question. The cellarer noted the poverty of his community, so he might have thought that all its inhabitants worked out of necessity. He also potentially erased status differences between laybrothers and monks. Engelhard could even have had in mind the labor of the monastery’s hired workers and the peasants living in the neighborhood around the monastery since, in his position as one “who took care of the affairs of the house,” he would have recognized the work that kept his monastery operating. The details in his story about paying the hired workers and caring for the tools demonstrate his interest in those who contributed to the monastery’s well-being. Still, his concern for the value of work did not extend to valuing labor for the production of commodities.44 Nonetheless, his conception of labor differed from the attitude expressed by other Cistercian authors and was more akin to the ideas of early thirteenthcentury scholastics who found spiritual value in the involuntary labor of peasants.45 Engelhard’s story asked its audience to reflect on the relationship between work and spiritual formation. Mary’s response to the cellarer, that what “gives pleasure receives a penalty while duty earns the reward” is a reference to the Benedictine Rule that Engelhard’s audiences of monks and nuns would have recognized.46 A passage in the seventh chapter of the Rule asserts, “What is willful [voluntas] receives a penalty while duty [necessitas] earns a crown,” but many copies of the Rule, including some in Cistercian abbeys, replaced the word voluntas with voluptas.47 The Rule employs this phrase when describing the steps of humility through which a monk turns away from self-will to conform to the will of God. By the twelfth century, however, as entrance into monastic life became a personal choice, the implications of this passage shifted.48 Mary’s wordplay encouraged Engelhard’s audience to meditate on the changing meanings of voluntas and its relation to voluptas. She may have answered the cellarer’s questions about the spiritual value of his labor, but her pun asked the audience to consider their relationship to the Rule, the complicated interplay between obedience, willfulness, desire, pleasure, and voluntary action, and the ways in which the Cistercians

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enacted the transformation of their will through their labor. As an intermediary between earth and heaven, Mary did not just confirm the holiness of Cistercian customs and the transcendent value of labor but she also provided material for further interpretation, contemplation, and spiritual growth. Engelhard’s story of Mary’s visitation has no explicit markers that designated it for an audience of women. In fact, Engelhard concluded his tale by celebrating a special relationship between Mary and her monks. “In this way,” he wrote, “Mary was accustomed to play with her boys [pueris], and thus, showing herself to them in a vision, she offered them a gift of peace and grace.”49 Nonetheless, the story provides two general messages that could extend to a Cistercian audience of women and men. One is that all labor, whether voluntary or necessary, had value in reforming the self. The other is that the products of labor could connect heaven to earth. Engelhard recounted two stories with female protagonists that illustrate how women’s labor could produce such sacramental signs. One is a story of a mother and her daughter who lived in a hamlet near Langheim. The mother was a weaver who made her daughter a cloth in preparation for her marriage, but after a dream, the daughter changed her mind about marriage.50 She explained to her mother that a young man transported her far above the world to a church filled with girls and virgins in splendid garments. In their midst was a woman, “festooned with every precious stone, who wore on her head a crown of flashing gems such that she on her own could illuminate the earth with her light.”51 The woman invited the girl to join her companions and then sent her back to earth to await her summons. After the girl described her dream, she added, “Now, mother, do as you should; mother, make it so, and have a care for your daughter. The things which you prepared for me for the world, send them up to heaven so that I may enjoy them there. Give to Holy Mary these garments so that they may be turned into purple and silk for me among the virgin chorus.”52 Soon after, the daughter fell sick and died. Her distraught mother took the wedding cloth to Langheim where she gave it to the monks, and she returned home, consoled. This tale praises Langheim as a portal to heaven from which the mother’s homespun wool could become the daughter’s purple silk.53 The construction of this praise, however, relied on the audience’s prior knowledge, for in the daughter’s dream, neither the young man nor the crowned woman identified themselves. Nonetheless, the woman and the daughter—and by extension the audience—recognized the woman as the Virgin Mary. The daughter told her mother to give the cloth to Mary; it was the mother who decided to

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present the gift to Langheim, a house dedicated to the Virgin. The cloth neither confirmed the truth of the daughter’s dream nor displayed its own heavenly character. It remained wool, changed only in its location. Nonetheless, it became a sign of the mother’s confidence that an earthly gift to Langheim was also a gift to Mary in heaven. Just as the girl’s knowledge and faith allowed her to recognize Mary, the cloth became purple silk in the minds of those who heard the story. The story also sanctifies the mother’s labor. Engelhard introduced the tale by noting that “the daughter was soon cut off from her weaving life and instead received a robe of immortality from the hand of God.”54 The central metaphor in this passage presents life as a weaving and death as cloth cut from the loom. This metaphor has a long lineage, but within monastic culture it resonated with the cantus from Isaiah 38:12 that monastic communities chanted at Lauds and during the Sunday night office.55 In the song, King Hezekiah laments that, “like a weaver, I have rolled up my life; he cuts me off from the loom.” By invoking this metaphor, Engelhard connected the daughter to the cloth. Both were the products of the mother’s labor. When the mother cut the cloth from her loom, her daughter died. Furthermore, woman’s weaving created a cloth with transcendent value, for once at Langheim, it existed simultaneously as woolen cloth on earth and as purple silk in heaven. Engelhard did not mention what the monks did with the cloth, although in another story, they used a gift of woolen cloth for their own robes.56 If they made their robes from the mother’s cloth, it would have furthered the links between their male monastic community and Mary’s female court in heaven, since the cloth would have been worn simultaneously in both places. But it was not only the monastery that linked heaven and earth, it was also the mother’s work in producing the cloth, for the story’s language and metaphors encouraged its audience to imagine her woolen weaving as a material sign of the heavenly reality of purple silk. Engelhard’s second story with a female protagonist is the account that the nun Mechthild related to Engelhard about her great-aunt. This tale is not part of the collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel, but it is appended to Mechthild’s vita. It also illuminates Engelhard’s attitudes about the sacramental possibilities of women’s work. Engelhard knew the older Mechthild had been a scribe, for in the vita, he emphasized Mechthild’s willingness to put down her pen immediately whenever summoned. This description illustrates her obedience more than the value of her work. The added story, however, emphasizes Mechthild’s production. According to the niece, Mechthild often copied

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psalters and missals, doing so not only “to avoid eating the bread of leisure” but also “to serve the divine more earnestly.”57 One day, while writing, she could not sharpen her pen. Frustrated, she asked God for help. Immediately, a youth appeared. He had “beautiful face, shining robe, and sweet speech,” and he asked “his beloved” what troubled her. Her response connected her irritation with her pen to her spiritual despair. “I spend my time uselessly, I toil for nothing, and I do not know how to prepare my pen,” she lamented.58 She gave her pen to the youth and he fixed it for her so thoroughly that she wrote with it for the rest of her life. From then on, Engelhard concluded, “no one could write so well, no one so quickly, no one so readily, and no one so correctly, nor could anyone imitate in likeness her hand. The pen’s preparation was permanent, but the preparer disappeared and appeared in the work of which he was the maker.”59 Mechthild’s complaint to the youth expressed more than frustration over a dull pen. Like the cellarer who questioned Mary in the cloister, Mechthild worried about the spiritual value of her work. By fixing her pen, the heavenly youth transformed what she made. As in many of his stories, Engelhard left it to his audience to interpret the identity of the apparition, but the youth’s appearance and his reference to Mechthild as his “beloved” suggests that he was not the divine messenger Mechthild had requested but Jesus himself. The apparition made Mechthild’s writing more distinctive and more beautiful, and it transformed her texts into sacraments. Just as a priest, using the prayers and instructions laid out in a missal, changed bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, so Mechthild’s devoted writing filled books with the presence of Jesus, who “appeared in the work of which he was the maker.” Her work as a scribe produced manuscripts that signified a connection between heaven and earth.60 Engelhard’s stories about men and women at work do not depend on gendered characteristics. Both Cistercian monks and nuns worked in the fields at the harvest. Likewise, both worked as scribes, and, by the late twelfth century, weaving had become an occupation for both men and women.61 Engelhard’s stories suggest that religious women could consider their labor as part of their process of spiritual formation. Herman of Tournai described twelfth-century Cistercian women laboring in the fields as did the monks, and thirteenth-century Cistercian nuns provided hospices for travelers and cared for lepers and other marginalized people.62 Engelhard’s stories provide another glimpse into the importance of work for Cistercian women. Even more, they demonstrate how monks and nuns could envision the holiness of

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a life that did not look like heaven on earth. The stories encourage their audiences to imagine the products of their labor—whether cloth, missals, or vases filled with sweat—as existing simultaneously in heaven and on earth. Rather than emphasizing the presence of relics or the importance of the Eucharist in connecting heaven to earth, these stories instead offered to nonsacerdotal monks, laybrothers, and nuns connections that were forged through the process of their own spiritual reformation.

Prayer as Earthly Labor Engelhard’s stories present prayer as a form of labor. In doing so, they reconceptualize the ways prayer could connect monasteries to heaven. Engelhard’s contemporaries depicted the monks’ prayers as joining the choirs of angels in praise of God. The story that prefaces the Collectaneum describes Bernard of Clairvaux assuring his monks that their chant participated in angels’ heavenly song, while another story, repeated in the Exordium magnum and in one of the vitae of Bernard, depicts an apparition in which Bernard, accompanied by angels, visited Clairvaux’s monks in choir and saw the monks’ prayers as if they were banderoles on a panel painting. Some of the prayers were written in gold, others in silver, still others in ink, while some were written with water and quickly faded from sight.63 The stories note the heavenly value of the monks’ own personal development, and they use the figure of Bernard to reinforce the connection. Engelhard agreed that prayer connected earth to heaven, but his stories present prayer as a form of labor whose earthly products are transformed in heaven. There are hints of this in the story of the former regular canon with which this chapter began. That tale shows the seemingly chaotic life of the Cistercians on earth simultaneously existing in heaven, where orderly ranks of monks sing the praises of God. Its references to Daniel further augment the liturgical resonances. Not only did the former canon, as “another Daniel,” see thousands upon thousands in heaven attending God, but after his vision, he told his abbot that he would remain a Cistercian, “becoming four to their three.” His statement suggests that the Cistercians resembled the three boys in the fiery furnace “singing hymns to God and blessing the Lord.”64 The “Benedicite,” which the Cistercians chanted at Lauds on Sundays and feast days, is one of the prayers of these three boys, in which they

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join all of creation to celebrate the Lord and praise God for delivering them from the fire of damnation. Another of Engelhard’s tales makes clearer this gulf between human and angelic prayer. The story originated at Morimond, and the monk Bezelin brought it to Langheim. Conrad of Eberbach included a variation in his Exordium magnum, telling of a monk so proud of his beautiful voice that his performance pleased a demon.65 Engelhard’s story emphasizes the monk’s devotion to the liturgy more than his pride, for the man had a “strong mature manner and took the greatest care never to be silent in choir, but to sing continuously and neglect nothing that was appropriate for the divine office.”66 Yet a hint of pride remains, for in his account, Engelhard noted that this monk hoped to perform well for the observances of the Feast of the Assumption. Just before the feast, the man fell sick and lost his strength, “scorning bread but hungering for song and the joy that he found in singing.” Alas, he found that his voice could not produce a sound.67 Again suggesting the possibility of the monk’s misguided intentions, Engelhard remarked that God pitied the singer but also wished to make an example of him so that this would not “happen in vain or be concealed in any way.”68 Another monk noticed his brother’s efforts to sing and watched as God sent assistance. Two angels supported the sick man but they also goaded him, pricking his chest and neck so that he surpassed all the others with the strength of his voice. When the office ended and the angels left, the monk again fell ill. Engelhard concluded that this “certainly warned that what he had done was not by his strength but theirs.” The apparition affected the observer as well as the singer, for having watched the struggle, he “lamented, marveled, and was exceedingly remorseful,” and he grieved so publicly that his brothers asked him what he had seen. When they heard his account, they were edified and delighted by it.69 The complex reactions of the observer and the monastic community model for Engelhard’s audience how they too should respond to the story. Whereas the story in the Exordium magnum offers a clear lesson about the dangers of pride, Engelhard’s tale instead elicits from the observer and its audience a recognition of human weakness. The singer was devoted to performing the liturgy, but no matter how beautifully he sang, he could not equal what angels made possible. The experience taught the entire community, and by extension Engelhard’s audience, to lament their weakness but also to recognize that Cistercian life offered them the possibility of heavenly assistance. As the former regular canon also learned, the Cistercians were not

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angels on earth, but their song still connected their monasteries to heaven. Engelhard concluded his account with commentary that suggested both labor and prayer produced earthly signs of their heavenly meaning. He exhorted his audiences: “Let us rejoice that we are challenged by word and by example: let us sing to God and labor for God. For the emotion [affectus] accompanies the deed, since even sweat does not flow into a vacuum but is collected and preserved in the perfume bottle of Mary. Nor do words cross into a void. They are written by angels in the middle of the book of life, bringing life to those who sing them with faith.”70 Just as the Cistercians’ labor produced sweat that became perfume in heaven, so their prayers produced words that were inscribed by angels in the book of life. But unlike the Exordium magnum story about the monks’ prayer forming banderoles, Engelhard did not describe this heavenly writing, leaving it, like the perfume and the purple silk, to the imagination of his audience. Engelhard’s conception of labor and prayer suggests that both activities could be simultaneously penitential and productive. Whether performed in the fields, in a scriptorium, at a loom, or as liturgical prayer, work produced sweat, books, cloth, and words whose earthly qualities signified a hidden but heavenly reality. Engelhard’s stories expanded the ways people could experience connections with heaven, for not only did the altar’s consecrated hosts and saints’ relics appear one way on earth and exist another way in heaven, but so did the products of everyday behaviors. Like other sacramental signs, the sweat, writing, cloth, and prayer never fully displayed their transcendent qualities. Instead, Engelhard’s stories demonstrate that the intentions of those who produced such material could transform what they produced. As the former regular canon discovered, Cistercian life on earth did not make visible its status in heaven. The regular canon could not understand this until he saw the monks in heaven singing in orderly rows, at which point Engelhard turned the lesson of his story inward, proclaiming that it was the “testimony of the monks’ conscience” that was the glory of the order.71 Just as his stories about the Eucharist rebound to demonstrate the spiritual condition of their protagonists, so these stories of Cistercian holiness emphasize the importance of thoughts and conscience. No matter how the monastery appeared to an observer, the Cistercians’ consciences knew whether their prayer and labor joined them to the angels who sang the blessings of God, to the virgins who dressed in purple silk, and to Mary who filled the heavens with the perfume from their labor.

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The Virgin Mary and Other Apparitions Engelhard’s stories offer saints and angels whose presence spurred the proper performance of daily observances. It was common for monasteries to seem permeable to such otherworldly apparitions. The accounts of the Desert Fathers describe monks who combated demons and received support from saints and angels. Religious communities throughout the Middle Ages served as battlegrounds where the inhabitants of heaven and hell fought over human souls and where the recent dead appeared to the living to request assistance from their prayers. However, the identity of these apparitions and the nature of their interactions with the living reflect a variety of conceptions about the afterlife and connections with heaven.72 For many twelfth-century Cistercian storytellers, the appearance of saints provided reassurance about Cistercian sanctity. They promised a heavenly reward to those who persevered despite the difficulties of their ascetic life. Engelhard’s stories, in comparison, are less likely to combine their moral lessons with eschatological promises. His apparitions scolded monks into good behavior on earth rather than promising them rewards in heaven. In keeping with Engelhard’s emphasis on the mixed quality of life on earth, his tales of apparitions depict the difficulties of personal reformation, and they help their audiences imagine their communities as places where members could receive assistance from the divine.

The Virgin Mary as Abbot The Virgin Mary is the most common apparition in Engelhard’s tales. She appears so frequently that the modern scholars who cataloged Engelhard’s manuscripts initially thought his text a collection of Marian miracles.73 Yet Engelhard’s Mary differs from the Mary in most twelfth-century compendia of the Virgin’s miracles, as well as from the Mary in other Cistercian collections of exempla. Rather than enacting her role as the Mother of Mercy who intercedes with her son for the salvation of humanity, Engelhard’s Mary serves as a strict but caring disciplinarian who encourages the reformation of those devoted to her. Even when a monk’s vision appeared as a reward, as did Gotschalk’s vision of Mary on the altar, Engelhard’s story contains a lesson. Gotschalk’s vision reminded Engelhard’s audience that they should

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enact Mary’s sacrifice at the Presentation, making themselves and their reformation into an offering to God. Mary’s appearances in Engelhard’s tales provide ways for his audiences to imagine the heavenly meaning of human behaviors rather than depicting the monastery as heaven. The Cistercians’ Marian piety is well known but little studied. Sometimes, later medieval stories of Bernard of Clairvaux’s devotion to Mary are read as reflecting Bernard’s own ideas.74 Certainly, Bernard wrote homilies and hymns dedicated to Mary, and he emphasized her role as the vessel though which Jesus took on human flesh. However, most twelfth-century Cistercians were uninterested in exploring the Song of Songs as representing Mary, and Bernard’s exegesis seldom made Mary a protagonist or gave her a voice.75 Mary remained silent in most twelfth-century Cistercian story collections as well. She frequently appeared in visions, often holding the Christ Child or appearing at the foot of the Cross, but she seldom spoke. Even in the famous story of Mary visiting the monks at Clairvaux during the harvest, the visionary viewed Mary from a distance and others spoke for her.76 Most Cistercian authors considered Mary the conduit who brought God to earth and as the suffering mother at the foot of the Cross. At times, especially in the Exordium magnum, protagonists addressed her as the Mother of Mercy who provided special favors to those who were devoted to her. By the time Caesarius of Heisterbach wrote, Mary assumed a more active role in offering mercy, providing help to her devotees even if they were sinners or criminals. She did the same in many of the non-Cistercian collections of her miracles.77 Engelhard’s stories, however, stand apart from this developing strand of Marian devotion. His Mary was instead a disciplinarian who acted like a good abbot and encouraged her monks to reform. Many of Engelhard’s Marian tales illuminate areas of temptation in religious life. They often depict monks behaving badly. In one story, an angry monk refused to accept correction in chapter and initiated a brawl.78 That night, in a dream, two wolves attacked him and started to devour him. A shining woman armed with a staff struck the wolves and drove them off. She scolded the monk, explaining that the wolves, as enemies of his soul, had become strong because of his disobedience. “If your obedience had protected you,” she admonished, “they would not have dared anything and could not have done anything. I am Mary and I do not want your destruction. Come to your senses, I warn you!”79 The monk woke, but he saw the same vision awake that he experienced while asleep. The next day, his abbot asked what he had seen and whether he was still raging and angry. The monk, having

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learned from his vision to be gentle and cautious, reported his vision and agreed to make satisfaction in chapter. Another story describes the temptation to abandon monastic life. A monk left his monastery to marry but regretted his decision and returned to religious life. He still missed his family, and his abbot could not dissuade him from leaving again. The night before his planned departure, unable to sleep, the monk rose to keep vigils in the choir. There he fell asleep. Mary appeared to him with a sad face and scolded him. “What are you considering, you miserable man?” she asked. She continued to berate him: “Why are you mulling foolish things in your mind, considering flight and fleeing safety? You love that woman; love me instead. For I am better than her and more useful to you than the interest of your sons for whom you flee. If you pay attention to this one thing for yourself, you should not pay attention to them. Already you have destroyed the greater part of your glory by acquiring them. You want to be with them? Come with me and I will show them to you!”80 Drawing him down the length of the church, Mary threw open the doors. In front of the church the monk saw a great abyss with a dragon at the bottom. It strangled his wife and children with its tail and breathed fire into their mouths. “Behold!” Mary told the monk, “since you want to be with them!” and she dangled the monk over the abyss as if to throw him in. He shouted that he did not want to stay with his family after all. “Swear this to me,” Mary demanded, and he did.81 The next morning, he reported to his community what he had seen and he remained in his monastery. These stories of temptation employ metaphors that resonate with Biblical images and passages that were familiar to their monastic audiences. They create a Mary who acted as an abbot and who took on roles more commonly attributed to Jesus. In both tales, Mary reinforced the actions of abbots who, by themselves, could not convince their monks to behave. In beating back the wolves, Mary served as a shepherd protecting her flock. This story intensifies the images of the Cistercians as God’s true sheep that Engelhard had developed in his eucharistic tales, but it replaces the more common image of Jesus as shepherd with Mary. In a more elaborate set of metaphors, the story of the monk and the dragon evokes the prophylactic language of Psalm 90 (Qui habitat) that the Cistercians sang every evening at Compline. With this psalm, monks and nuns asked God for shelter under his wings and for protection “from the snare of the hunter” so that they might “trample the lion and the dragon underfoot.” Bernard of Clairvaux, who wrote seventeen Lenten sermons on this psalm, reminded his monastic audience to avoid the snares

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that would encourage them to backslide and leave monastic life.82 Engelhard’s tale develops Bernard’s ideas. Engelhard used the image of the hunter and his snares to describe the monk’s temptation to rejoin his family, and he presented the devil as a hunter who would not stop pursuing the monk. “Having exhausted one snare, he wove still more; he multiplied the chains, setting out the love of his wife, the affection of his children, and more enticements [delicias] than he would ever be able to have,” Engelhard explained.83 The dragon in the psalm who tormented the monk’s family is also a symbol of the monk’s own temptations that he had not yet trampled underfoot. By showing the monk the consequences of his decision to rejoin his family, Mary helped him elude these traps and encouraged him to transfer his love from them to her. Engelhard’s story thus blends the imagery of the psalm with the monk’s vision, making its protective qualities seem real. But whereas in the psalm and in Bernard’s sermons it was Jesus who sheltered the monks under his wings, Engelhard gave that role to Mary. Engelhard’s Mary also displayed a strong sense of justice. In one of his few stories without a clear connection to the Cistercian order, Engelhard told of a gluttonous infirmarian from a house of Premonstratensian canons. This tale appears in a different form in Conrad’s Exordium magnum.84 In Conrad’s telling, the tale concerns an abbot who delayed hearing the infirmarian’s confession even though the infirmarian was suddenly moved by compunction. As a result of the delay, the infirmarian despaired of his salvation and cut his throat. Demons started to carry him away but dropped him; he survived because God wished to give the repentant abbot the chance to hear the confession he had ignored earlier. The regular canons found their brother where the demons left him, on the top of the bell tower wall. After they staunched his wound, he finally made his confession. Engelhard’s story focuses more on the infirmarian than on the abbot. In fact, Engelhard’s abbot offered the infirmarian a second opportunity to confess, but the infirmarian no longer was moved to do so. Rather than depicting the abbot’s failings, Engelhard’s story emphasizes the relationship between appearance and reality. The infirmarian looked holy but he hid his sins from his community, and when he cut his throat, his foul selfpunishment matched the foulness of his sin. As in Conrad’s account, the brothers found the knife and gore from the wounds in the kitchen, but they discovered the body only the next day when they saw the man on the roof of the church. Again, he was alive even though he had slit his neck. In Engelhard’s account, it was Mary who intervened to save him, not God.

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Engelhard’s love of direct speech gave voice to both the infirmarian and to Mary. The infirmarian told his brothers that when evil spirits started to carry him to Satan, they were hindered by the Virgin Mary who stood on the roof of the church with her retinue of saints. She demanded of the demons, “What is this presumption by which you dishonor my church, make your path through it, and inflict abuse on me and my son? Why do you bear off my cleric? You have led him off because he has sinned, and because of this he is borne to Satan at the death of his flesh, but not so that you can rule over his spirit but so that it can be saved in the day of the Lord. But you claim the whole for the part, and therefore are indebted for plunder, and thus you will let this debt go. Now you will not bear him any further but gently and carefully place him on this roof.85 In accusing the demons of taking more than they were owed, Mary pointed out that the demons acted against divine justice. The infirmarian recovered from his wounds and from his “criminal illness,” but he never fully reformed and remained “weak and slack, short of perfection.”86 Like Simon of Sorø, whom Mary scolded and resurrected so that he could become a Cistercian, this regular canon became a sign for those who saw him. Only at the conclusion of his story did Engelhard associate Mary’s actions with those of God, remarking that these signs demonstrate both the “anger of God and his grace” since, “by the grace of God and the appeal of Mary the man returned anew to life, cruelly corrected, carried off in danger, and mercifully rescued.”87 Yet the story neither promises Cistercian salvation nor emphasizes Mary’s interventions with her son. Instead it illuminates the power of learning through experience, and it gives Mary the central role in teaching this lesson. Engelhard’s stories in his collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel depict Mary as a disciplinarian who enacted the care expected of a monastic superior.88 In none of Engelhard’s stories did Mary appear as the merciful mother who interceded with her son at Judgment. Instead, she helped those devoted to her reform their behaviors and understand the consequences of their actions. Since Engelhard shared these stories with monks as well as nuns, it is unlikely he intended to create an active and independent Mary specifically for an audience of women. But his lack of interest in Mary as intercessor with God dovetails with his lack of interest in priests as intercessors between God and the laity. His depiction of Mary focused the attention of his audience on the importance of individual reform and the understanding of the sacramental signs that this reform encouraged.

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Dying with Friends Even when Engelhard turned to stories about death, he remained more concerned about epistemological questions than eschatological ones. Again, his stories differ from those of his contemporaries. In most Cistercian story collections, saintly apparitions were common at deathbeds, but Engelhard’s accounts of death did not describe such deathbed visitations. In the story of Simon of Sorø, Mary appeared to a dying monk, but only to revive him so he could reform.89 As in many of his other stories, Engelhard’s descriptions of death imply links with heaven rather than demonstrating them. They encouraged their audiences to interpret the heavenly meaning of earthly signs rather than celebrating heavenly apparitions come to earth or providing a preview of the vision possible in heaven. Ultimately, the hope and solace that Engelhard’s stories offered his audiences depended not on saints but on the ways Cistercian monasteries provided community support for the development of a good conscience and a reformed will. A consciousness of death and the expectation of an afterlife deeply influenced monastic culture, shaping the penitential life of the community and its economic well-being. Death crystalized concerns about the relationship between earthly life and heaven. Monastic deathbed rituals prepared the dying for their transit into a new world, and lay benefactors often entered monasteries before death to benefit from a community’s prayers. Death involved the entire community, both in preparing the dying and in praying for the dead.90 Although the Cistercians curtailed prayers and masses for the dead, their instructions about preparations for the death, burial, and commemoration of their monks differed little from other monasteries. When those who cared for the sick thought a monk was near death, they would beat a wooden board, calling everyone to assemble at the deathbed. There, the community would sing psalms and chant the litany of saints. The dying person would be placed on a pallet of straw on the floor and, if possible, the abbot or prior would hear confession and administer the last rites.91 The presence of saints around a deathbed often demonstrated a monastery’s links with heaven. These apparitions signaled to the community and to those who were dying that they would be saved. In one frequently repeated Cistercian story, a dying monk saw John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Mary, and Christ at his deathbed.92 Other stories depicted visions foreshadowing a death. In one tale, a monk saw angels picking four lilies from the

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cemetery just before the death of four brothers, while in another, the infirmarian saw Christ preparing a place for him in heaven.93 Some Cistercian stories emphasize the Office for the Dead, while others depict the return of the recently deceased to ask for prayers that would alleviate penitential suffering in the afterlife.94 In keeping with an order that curtailed the rites performed for deceased benefactors, however, these ghosts are usually Cistercian monks and seldom lay people.95 Rather than describing the possibility of heavenly companions for dying monks, Engelhard portrayed the support provided by human companionship and the shared virtues of the monastic community. Strikingly, of his five stories for the nuns of Wechterswinkel that depict monks who died good deaths, three describe monks who died in pairs.96 They suggest that it was the support of others, even more than the rites offered by monastic priests or the invocations offered by the community’s prayers and litanies, that helped dying monks make the transition between earthly life and an afterlife. In two cases, these paired deaths also ignore differences in monastic status. The deaths become signs of the unity, harmony, and companionship that the Cistercians endeavored to create on earth. Two of Engelhard’s stories of paired deaths only imply a connection between heaven and earth. The monks’ deaths do not demonstrate their salvation so much as provide their audiences with elements to construct their own confidence in their community’s holiness. Engelhard explicitly linked these two stories, recognizing the wonder that the simultaneous deaths elicited. In both cases, monks were “presented to the face of God” with a companion.97 One story describes the lay monk Gotschalk, who died with his finger miraculously pointing to the passage from Psalm 118, “Open to me the gates of justice and I will go into them and praise the Lord.” A young monk became so distraught when he envisioned Gotschalk entering those gates by himself that he too died. Engelhard explained that this second death demonstrated the youth’s desire to become Gotschalk’s companion in the kingdom of heaven. His unwillingness to let Gotschalk face the gates of justice by himself suggests an anxiety about this passage as well as his desire to maintain the community’s support even after death.98 In Engelhard’s second story of a paired death, the main protagonist of the tale was a laybrother from an aristocratic background. Before he fell ill, he had received a vision that rewarded his innocence and simplicity. One night, he saw the laybrothers’ crucifix in the nave of the church grow to the size of the church’s great crucifix, a vision that again implied the spiritual

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equality of monks and laybrothers. When the community assembled around his deathbed, the laybrother rejoiced at his impending death. The prior, pleased to see such joy, joked with him, asking, “You, a noble man, are going to leave without your chaplain? Formerly, you would not take possession of a worldly palace by yourself, and now you will go alone to a palace in the heavens?” “God forbid,” the dying man responded, and he pointed to one of the monastic priests. “That priest there will go with me; see that he is prepared.” The two men died together. Engelhard concluded that “these happy men gave back their souls equally and joyfully, and thus, through their holy merits, proceeded to God for reward.”99 Unlike Bernard of Clairvaux’s rebuke of a laybrother’s presumption of salvation, Engelhard depicted an equality between two men of different monastic status. Engelhard’s third story of paired deaths describes two young monks whose abbot had commanded them to go to heaven and return to tell him of their condition. Engelhard stressed the virtues of these youths and their role in their community, for they “blazed and gave light to all who were brightened by them, teaching and demonstrating a model of sanctity.”100 When they neared death, the community mourned, for “all were sad about something they would lose: the father, their affection; the brothers, their help; and everyone, the example of their sanctity that profited all.” The abbot, “not judging this obedience impossible,” ordered them to go to heaven and return within seven days to give him a report. He wished to know “whether he had provided for their death, and whether they needed help for themselves, and he hoped they could be a comfort and a spur for him and for all of his monks who merited it.”101 The youths returned in a cloud of fragrance, and they assured their abbot that they could see God as a reward for their labors. Nonetheless, they were not equal. One carried a crown, the other did not. The monk who lacked a crown explained that he was guilty of the sin of singularity.102 Nonetheless, he told his abbot that he was now blessed and among the saved. Having made their report, the monks asked to be dismissed, and they returned to heaven. Engelhard’s tale emphasizes the importance of community, both on earth and in heaven. Not only did he describe monks who assisted and supported one another, but his story shows that the friends continued to benefit from one another’s virtues once in heaven. As the youth guilty of singularity explained to his abbot, “although there is among us a difference in merits and rewards, and a special privilege that glorifies each man, nevertheless there is a unity of glory, with me having in the others that which is lacking in me.

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Thus we may all be one in that glorious unity of the body of Christ.”103 The story explains the support that the other paired deaths implied. Not only did the young monks help one another as they passed from life to death, but they shared the rewards for their virtues once they were in heaven, creating unity out of their diversity. Their story illustrates the importance of spiritual growth while in a community on earth and the contribution of such merits in creating the unified body of Christ in heaven. Engelhard’s stories show how a community of the living comforted the dying and how tales about dying educated those still alive. His accounts of Marian apparitions and of deathbed scenes acknowledge links between heaven and earth, but they do so by recognizing the mixed nature of life on earth and the uncertainty of salvation. Seldom did Engelhard describe visions of the afterlife, and when he did, his message was ambiguous. The necromancer praised Cistercian life but reported that there were Cistercians in hell, the regular canon described a heaven that was jumbled like a marketplace, and even the youthful ghosts who returned to their abbot depicted a heaven whose inhabitants remembered their shortcomings and sins and depended on the virtues of others. Rather than creating a sacred monastic space that relied on the intercession of priests and saints or on monastic prayers for the dead, Engelhard’s stories encouraged nuns and monks to imagine the heavenly consequences of their earthly behaviors. At times, these behaviors brought Mary to earth to scold people into reformation; at other times, they demonstrated that the support offered by a religious community had heavenly as well as earthly consequences. In offering moral examples without making eschatological promises, Engelhard’s tales encouraged his audiences to imagine their earthly behaviors as signs of a heavenly reality.

Conclusion The Cistercians’ story collections demonstrate the variety of ways that nuns and monks could conceptualize the links between their monasteries and heaven. For many Cistercians, these connections asserted their order’s holiness and even the superiority of their way of life. Engelhard of Langheim’s stories also celebrated Cistercian holiness, but he was less confident than his contemporaries about the inevitability of Cistercian salvation. The visions he described did not fully bridge the gap between earth and heaven, nor did they connect earthly virtue with eventual eschatological reward. Rather than

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emphasizing the importance of spiritual visitors from heaven, Engelhard instead described people who learned the heavenly meaning of objects and actions on earth. These objects might be the cloth given to the monastery, the sweat produced by the monks’ labor, or the paired deaths of Cistercian brothers. When Engelhard did describe heavenly visitors, whether monastic ghosts or Marian apparitions, their messages were ambiguous and required the audience’s imagination to fully interpret them. In fact, Engelhard noted that many of his stories provided both comfort and warning, depending on the character and concerns of his audience. He assumed spiritual formation to be an ongoing process through which people gradually understand the meanings behind his stories’ signs, and he recognized that what looked ordinary on earth could at the same time be a divine offering in heaven. By telling stories of earthly objects and rituals that acquired sacramental qualities, Engelhard expanded the sacred places in the monastery beyond the altars that housed relics and the consecrated host. He also recognized the offerings of those who were not priests. By showing regular interactions between laybrothers and monks rather than the parallel but separate lives that the Cistercian regulations prescribe, his stories have an egalitarian quality lacking in many other Cistercian tales. Religious women could also recognize in these stories their own labor and prayer and their own efforts to comfort those who were dying. Furthermore, by suggesting that everyday objects and behaviors provided earthly signs of a heavenly grace, Engelhard’s tales suggest that the personal reformation of religious men and women could join heaven to earth as readily as the sacramental powers of monastic priests. In recounting stories that relied neither on Bernard of Clairvaux’s confidence in Cistercian holiness nor on his promises of salvation, Engelhard depicted the sacramental qualities made possible by the work of nuns and monks, and he articulated a conception of Cistercian sanctity that was applicable not only for monks and laybrothers but also for religious women.

chapter 6

Discerning the Conscience

At the end of his account of the regular canon who expected Cistercians to be angels, Engelhard of Langheim asserted that the “testimony of the conscience” was the glory of his order.1 An emphasis on conscience runs throughout his collection. Engelhard assumed that the ability to perceive signs of a transcendent reality depended on the reformation of men and women through the discipline and care of a monastic community, and he encouraged the audiences of his stories to recognize the unseen meanings of everyday objects and behaviors. Yet he found visible signs that signified thoughts, intentions, and hidden sins more difficult to interpret and understand than the earthly signs of a heavenly reality. The issues and questions that he associated with repentance and discernment were ones that his scholastic contemporaries also explored, but whereas these theologians defined the process of penance and reconciliation as a sacrament, Engelhard told stories that ignored the sacramental powers of the priesthood. His tales taught his audiences to balance their scrutiny of the conscience with a recognition of divine forgiveness and, by imagining a God who was both just and merciful, to develop faith and avoid despair. The epistemological problems raised by the sacrament of penance differed from the questions associated with the Eucharist. The Eucharist encouraged theologians to explore the relationship of sacramental signs to the reality they represented, but the external elements of this sacrament—the bread and wine—were clear and undisputed. Penance and reconciliation, in comparison, did not have obvious material signs. As a result, twelfth-century theologians debated what made penance and reconciliation a sacrament. They questioned which signs demonstrated the sacrament’s invisible grace, how

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confession and contrition reconciled a penitent with God, and what role a priest should serve in administering the sacrament. Whereas the Eucharist encouraged late twelfth-century scholastic theologians to investigate material change and gradually to adopt Aristotle’s natural philosophy, the establishment of penance as a sacrament instead elicited psychological investigations to assist priests in discerning both likely sins and the evidence that a sinner had repented. Engelhard shared with twelfth-century theologians an interest in the psychological questions that such discernment entailed, but he reframed them for communities of monks and nuns. He drew on monastic ideas about repentance and the role of a monastery as the custodian of the conscience, but his stories about virtue and conscience show that even wellmeaning abbots and caring members of a religious community did not always notice hidden thoughts and sins. Rather than celebrating the pastoral effectiveness of the Cistercians’ holy abbots and priests, Engelhard created negative examples that undermined Cistercian confidence in the inevitability of their salvation. Rather than describing the discernment of monastic priests, he offered the exemplary function of his stories to teach his audiences to recognize what the stories’ characters could not see. Despite Engelhard’s insistence on oral communication and his expressed suspicion of writing, he created written texts that displayed what abbots and communities could not always ascertain. His stories offered to the nuns of Wechterswinkel a way to develop the testimony of their conscience without emphasizing the pastoral role of priests.

Penance as a Sacrament Engelhard wrote at time when ideas of penance were in flux, both inside and outside of monastic communities. The twelfth century has long appeared central to the history of penance. In drawing together a century of debate over definitions of sin and sacrament and in requiring a yearly confession to a priest, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 has long seemed pivotal in instituting the private forms of confession and priestly surveillance that contributed to the formation of a new sense of self.2 Recent studies of the history of penance have unsettled this interpretation. They question a twelfth-century transition from public to private, expand discussions of penance beyond historical theology, and consider the penitential practices in monastic life as

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well as the relations between priest and laity.3 In this new history of penance, the Fourth Lateran Council no longer seems so central, and the Carolingian era has become an important period for understanding ideas of intention and conscience as well as for establishing the role of the clergy in eliciting confession of hidden sins.4 Despite these reinterpretations, the twelfth century remains a period during which scholars articulated the place of penance and reconciliation in the context of sacramental theologies, new pedagogical practices, and a priesthood self-conscious of its authority.5 Even if twelfth-century articulations of sin and repentance did not initiate discussions of intention and interiority, they did disassociate an Augustinian linkage between will and action and posit the conscience’s ability to consent to a misdirected will. Such ideas fostered a concern for unnoticed sins that could lurk beneath a virtuous appearance.6 Twelfth-century monks joined scholastically trained theologians in reconsidering practices of confession and the ways repentance could function as part of the process of spiritual growth. Monks too worried about the process of discerning hidden sins. Engelhard’s stories participate in these twelfth-century discussions about the sacramental nature of confession and penance and the role of priests in discerning sins and eliciting repentance. Medieval authors embedded in their discussions of penance their recognition that it was difficult to discover hidden sins and understand the relation between actions and intentions. Early monastic writings had emphasized tears as visible signs of repentance and compunction and stressed confession as part of a progression toward self-perfection.7 The Benedictine Rule distinguished between public sins that required public penances and private sins that an abbot or spiritual father could cure as “sin-sicknesses of the soul” without public exposure, but it did not emphasize the abbot’s role as priest.8 Both the Rule and its Carolingian commentaries assumed a link between will and action that would allow abbots and monks to notice a monk’s willfulness from his behavior.9 Carolingian reformers, interested in providing instructions for priest-confessors, drew on these monastic sources, stressing both the judicial and pastoral components of penance and the skilled questioning needed to open the secrets of the conscience.10 Carolingian writings depicted thought and action as inseparable, linking displays of penance with feelings of remorse, and they described priests as capable of eliciting the confession of secret sins that were otherwise known only to God. Twelfth-century canon lawyers and theologians drew on Carolingian ideas and ecclesiastical canons, but they explored penance within a new

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scholastic curriculum and within a developing language of sacrament. They considered the responsibilities of priest and penitent; questioned the relation between observed actions, hidden thoughts, and divine grace; and taught priests to become effective pastors who could draw confessions from their flock and apply effective remedies. They were especially interested in the relation between a penitent’s feelings of contrition and the practice of confessing to a priest, and they asked whether it was God or the priest who remitted the sins of the contrite. Often, their works did not provide clear answers but rather summarized existing debates, leaving it to their readers to develop their own perspectives.11 Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard were among the first scholars to place confession and contrition within the framework of a sacramental theology. Hugh’s general definition of sacrament posited that a sacramental sign both effected the grace it signified and had a material quality that resembled what it signified, but Hugh inconsistently identified the elements of repentance that served as sacramental signs. He distinguished between internal and external penance, but the visible signs of divine forgiveness varied. At times he thought that tears and a humble confession demonstrated the fullness of contrition and a confidence in divine clemency, but at other times he thought a priest’s statement of forgiveness made sensible the invisible grace that encouraged repentance.12 Peter Lombard’s analysis offered a more consistent application of sacramental terminology. He used Hugh’s definition of a sacrament, but he clarified the distinction between contrition, confession, and satisfaction. He divided penance into three: the sacrament itself (sacramentum tantum), the sacrament and the thing signified (sacramentum et res), and the thing itself (res tantum). The res tantum or heart of the sacrament is the grace of God that forgives sins. The penitent’s contrition is the efficacious sign of divine grace, but it is also further signified by confession. Contrition is thus both res and sacramentum. Finally, confession and satisfaction are the visible manifestations of an internalized sign and the sacrament alone.13 Whereas Hugh had linked contrition and confession, separating them from satisfaction, Peter instead linked confession and satisfaction as visible signs of an invisible grace as well as visible signs of the internalized sign that was contrition. Both Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard also explored the role of the priest in administering the sacrament and discerning sins. Hugh defended the importance of confessing to a priest when he responded to an unnamed opponent, possibly Peter Abelard, who had argued that God alone possessed

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the power to forgive sins and that forgiveness depended solely on contrition. Hugh admitted that a contrite person unable to confess to a priest or misled by a priest’s mistaken imposition of satisfaction could still be saved, but he thought this exceptional, made possible by divine mercy. His understanding of the role of priests was not fully consistent. Priests were judges whose judgments were harsher than God’s but also were doctors who healed the spiritually sick, and they were intercessors who acted for those who could not presume to address God directly.14 Peter Lombard, in comparison, made clearer that God remitted sin, not the priest. More than did Hugh, Peter argued that contrition alone could suffice since it included the confession of the heart before God.15 As Peter Abelard had argued earlier, Peter Lombard posited that the priest’s key signifying his authority to bind and loose gave him only the power to excommunicate and reconcile. But priests also possessed a second key of discretion and this gave them the ability to recognize what God already knew and to enact, through their pastoral care, God’s merciful judgment. Peter recognized that not all priests possessed such discretion. If priests were indiscrete or foolish and imposed an inappropriate satisfaction, the penitent’s contrition would be sufficient.16 Nonetheless, Peter thought it advisable to confess to a priest since the practice of confession punished sinners, humbled them, and made them more cautious about sinning in the future. Although both Hugh and Peter applied sacramental terminology to the process of repentance, they also considered penance as part of a process of spiritual growth that resembled monastic formation. Hugh argued that sacraments tempered divine justice with mercy and provide a remedy for human iniquity.17 Furthermore, he introduced his discussion of confession and penance in his De sacramentis with an excursus on the emotions of fear and love, arguing that the fear of displeasing God and a desire to cleanse oneself initiated a path in which love would eventually displace fear.18 Similarly, Peter Lombard associated repentance with love; he thought penance repeatable because of the grace of divine mercy, and he argued that the restoring effect of penance depended on the penitent’s love of God.19 He thought penance both a sacrament and a “strength of mind” (virtus) that created sorrow in the soul and a hatred of sin.20 Both men expressed ideas that echoed the Benedictine Rule and monastic writings on repentance, suggesting the continued interaction between monastic and scholastic ideas. Twelfth-century Cistercian writings gradually incorporated ideas that their contemporaries discussed in the schools. For the first generations of

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Cistercian monks, repentance served only as the first step in a more general process of spiritual growth that taught monks to love and to recognize God’s mercy. By the late twelfth century, Conrad of Eberbach assumed a desire for repentance was the central reason for monasticism in general and for the Cistercian project in particular. The first Cistercians, Conrad claimed, were “abased by holy labor and crowned by dutiful penance” because of the nature of their observances.21 It is tempting to read Conrad’s comment as an accurate description of the motivations of the first Cistercians, especially since many early twelfth-century monastic authors did articulate their overwhelming sense of human sinfulness and their desire to repent before divine judgment.22 Yet, unlike figures such as Peter Damian and the wandering hermits of Normandy and Brittany, the early Cistercian authors neither emphasized self-punishing ascetic practices nor described an internalization of a divine tribunal within their conscience. Rather, they connected repentance with the discipline of a communal life that taught a monk to recognize divine mercy. By the last decades of the twelfth century, however, many Cistercian authors emphasized the sacramental practices of contrition and confession that the schoolmen had defined, and they considered the penitential character of Cistercian life as fundamental. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote about contrition and confession in the context of a contemplative monastic life that emphasized a growth in love more than a fear of judgment. He famously described the role of monks as weeping for their sins, and his letters and sermons to potential monks contrasted a sinful life in the world with the repentance possible in a monastery.23 Nonetheless, in his sermons on the Song of Songs, he tempered his discussion of repentance and divine justice with the process of learning to love a merciful God. “Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary, but only if it is not unremitting,” Bernard told his monastic audience. “It is healthy to combine it with the glad recollection of divine benevolence, lest sadness harden the heart and it perishes out of hopelessness.”24 For Bernard, confession and contrition were liturgical performances more than sacramental actions. Bernard used the term “confession” to express a way of talking with God that encompassed praise as well as repentance. Confession acknowledged the sinfulness of the human condition but it also offered thanksgiving.25 Bernard expressed contrition through the language of the Psalms, especially Psalm 50, which reminded monks that God would not scorn the sacrifice of a contrite and humbled heart. For him, sacraments were sacred signs that encouraged the imitation of Christ’s example, and he offered

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foot washing rather than confession as a sacrament because it helped monks conform to the humility and love that Jesus demonstrated when he washed Peter’s feet.26 The sinful woman from the Gospels who anointed Jesus’ feet with oil modeled contrition, and her visible ointment signified the “invisible and spiritual ointment” that a monk’s contrition produced.27 Through confession and contrition, humans could offer God ointments made from their sorrow and their gratitude. Bernard wrote that Christ, like a good doctor, could “medicate our wounds and soothe our pains,” and he emphasized that Christ’s unbounded love and mercy would restore the health of the soul to its purity and beauty.28 Bernard’s optimism about divine mercy and love coexisted with a pessimism about human nature. His writings express a new understanding of hidden sins and articulated the difficulties in discerning them. Cistercian monastic culture assumed that self-knowledge involved knowing others as well as oneself. Monks watched one another, and they described this surveillance as motivation to improve themselves and correct and encourage others. Bernard of Clairvaux’s treatise on the Steps of Humility and Pride, for instance, insists that knowing others is the first step in learning to know oneself, a step that starts the progression toward a knowledge of Christ.29 Yet Bernard’s perspective on the possibility of self-knowledge and discernment was bleak. As people scrutinized themselves and others, they discovered that people were wretched and unreliable, and they deceptively confused their own strengths for the strengths offered by God. Using the words of Psalm 115, Bernard declared that “every man is a liar.” Still, he hoped that these human shortcomings would teach the importance of divine mercy. By acknowledging their own wretchedness, Bernard thought, people could learn to sympathize with and pity those who were equally weak.30 Not only did people lie to themselves, they also willfully deceived others. As Bernard described a descent from humility and toward pride, his treatise moved from discussing visible sins in which actions display a state of mind, to considering hidden sins in which seemingly virtuous behaviors disguise wrong intent. Bernard’s satirical tone accentuates his sharp observations. Curiosity, he thought, was the first step in a monk’s descent. Here, the signs were obvious: a curious person had eyes that wandered. Lack of bodily control continued as the monk descended further. A monk with levity of mind displayed his unbalanced disposition in his speech, while a monk with foolish merriment could not stop giggling and preening and “when he puts his hand in front of his mouth, the giggles can still be heard popping out through his

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nose.”31 A boastful monk talked incessantly. Yet as this hypothetical monk descended toward pride, his sins became more deceptive. A monk guilty of singularity spent time fasting and in prayer, but he did this to show that he was better than others. His sins were hidden, apparent only because his arrogance and presumption meant that he refused to accept correction. Ultimately, even his confession became deceptive. He might act repentant by prostrating himself and might even force himself to weep, but these expressions of remorse only hid other more serious sins. As Bernard noted, “His confession sounds praiseworthy in his mouth but wickedness is hidden in the heart, so that he who hears may think that the confession is made with more humility than accuracy.”32 Bernard hoped that abbots could still discern these falsehoods since such a proud monk would not accept even the slightest rebuke without murmuring and protest.33 Nonetheless, this progression from humility to pride suggests that behavioral signs did not always correspond with the enormity of hidden sins. Bernard was not alone in considering the implications of human deception. In her letters to Peter Abelard, the abbess Heloise also expressed the possibility of hiding sinful thoughts behind a holy veneer; her lament over her own hypocrisy dovetailed with Abelard’s own emphasis on intention and his separation of a sin from its apparent sign.34 The mid-twelfth-century theologians who defined penance as a sacrament wrestled with these issues as well. Like Bernard, they recognized the difficulty of discerning signs of sin, and they posited the possibility of a feigned or insincere confession. Peter Lombard, for instance, considered cases where priests could not recognize that people were hiding the sins they committed, confessing sins they did not commit, or otherwise lying.35 His solution, and those of his contemporaries, was to train skilled confessors who might recognize when penitents dissembled. By the late twelfth century, some Cistercian authors began to incorporate the sacrament of penance and reconciliation into their stories. Most of them continued to maintain a monastic emphasis on the importance of the community in shaping conscience, but they also began to celebrate the priestly functions of their holy abbots. The early story collections, including the Collectaneum and Herbert’s Liber miraculorum, show the gradual incorporation of sacramental penance into Cistercian life. Only a few stories in the Collectaneum depict Cistercian monks confessing their faults, but the few that do offer a broad array of possibilities. Some celebrate confession to abbots

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and the abbot’s discretion and authority. One monk confessed to another monk but saw demons at his deathbed until he confessed to his abbot, while another abbot sensed his monks’ faults even when absent.36 In yet another story, an abbot could not discern a monk’s struggle with sexual temptations and consecrated him as a priest; the temptations disappeared only with the help of the Virgin Mary.37 Still other tales emphasize the traditional power of the monks’ prayers to assist those who had died without fully atoning for their sins; these tales ignore the sacrament of confession altogether.38 Similarly, Herbert of Clairvaux only sporadically mentioned penance as a sacrament. In most of his tales about repentance, monks received visions that encouraged them to confess their sins to their abbots, their priors, and their community, as the Benedictine Rule and Cistercian customs expected. Herbert did use one tale, about a ghost who warned a brother to confess a forgotten sin, to assert that one should not underestimate the sacrament of confession. He also told of a man possessed by a demon who denied the good of both the Eucharist and the sacrament of penance.39 Conrad of Eberbach, in comparison, frequently emphasized penance as a sacrament. In rewriting Herbert’s stories, he explored the relationship between confession and contrition. He elaborated Herbert’s story about the ghost’s warning by insisting that a monk’s confession should consist of both “contrition of heart and confession of the mouth.”40 He celebrated the power of the sacrament by modifying another of Herbert’s tales in which a monk who hid cloth under his bed was reproached by his conscience and confessed privately. “How great is the power of confession!” Conrad exclaimed. “No less great is the great loving kindness of the Redeemer in somehow giving us in this sacrament of confession the greatest hope of human salvation!”41 As Bernard had done, Conrad emphasized divine mercy and he celebrated the sacrifice of a humble heart and contrite spirit but unlike Bernard, he seldom described a contrite monk without also depicting the confession that such contrition provoked. He interpreted Bernard’s ideas in the context of the developing sacrament of penance, examining the relation between contrition and confession that scholastic theologians had explored as well. Caesarius of Heisterbach even more explicitly incorporated theological and pastoral teachings about penance into his monastic writings. He devoted two books in his Dialogue on Miracles to issues of penance. One focused on contrition and the other on confession. He prefaced each with considerations of doctrine, and he reproduced in these introductions scholastic teachings

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about the relation between repentance and penance, between guilt and penalty, and between inner and outer contrition.42 He retained Bernard’s conception of confession that included statements of faith and praise of God, but he was more interested in the confession of sins and the dispositions that encouraged people to confess. Like Peter Lombard, he understood confession to be the sign or “proof” of contrition, and he recognized that intention could suffice if the opportunity to confess was not possible.43 Few of his stories about repentance depict Cistercian monks. Instead, in his chapter on contrition, his stories wander off topic, becoming accounts of bishops and church reform. The narrator justified this since “it is the part of bishops to heal the contrite in heart, receive their confessions, and impose penance.”44 In the few stories that Caesarius told about monks, he at times suggested that a desire for the gift of tears demonstrated contrition, at times implied that contrition alone could be sufficient, and at times insisted that it was important that monks confess to their abbots rather than to the prior or a senior monk.45 Caesarius’s position was not consistent, but his stories placed even more emphasis on the abbot’s responsibility for the sacrament of penance and reconciliation in his community than did his predecessors. The Cistercians’ stories about repentance, confession, and contrition suggest that many Cistercian communities by the end of the twelfth century considered penance a sacrament and instituted practices to reinforce its importance. Monastic life had always stressed repentance, but early Cistercian authors presented human weakness and sinfulness as part of a process of growth by which one learned to recognize divine mercy through the discipline and care of a community. Bernard of Clairvaux did not consider confession and contrition as a sacrament but rather discussed them as components of a monastic life in which a person sacrificed their contrite heart and sang the praises of God. By the 1170s, however, Cistercian stories from Clairvaux and its affiliates employed the term “sacrament” for the process of repentance and reconciliation; by the turn of the century, Conrad of Eberbach thought the sacrament of penance shaped the penitential qualities of monastic life. By the time Caesarius of Heisterbach collected his stories, in the years after the Fourth Lateran Council, he included abbots in his discussion of priests, all of whom possessed the sacerdotal powers and skills needed to discern signs of sin and contrition and impose the appropriate penance. As Caesarius’s stories make clear, a priest’s responsibility for pastoral care encompassed monks, nuns, and the laity alike.

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Penance Without Priests Engelhard of Langheim told stories of sin, contrition, and pastoral care but he did not describe repentance as a sacramental process. His tales suggest that the care provided by a priest was not the only way to encourage the development of a good conscience. Engelhard recognized the importance of the pastoral care that Cistercian abbots provided, but he seldom described their priestly role in performing sacraments. Instead, his stories portray priests and abbots who made mistakes, missed the signs of another person’s despair, or failed in their interventions. Many of his stories were related to the tales collected at Clairvaux, but the differences between his accounts and those in other collections illuminate his different perspective on the sacramental power of priests. Engelhard did celebrate the pastoral care and discernment of Cistercian abbots and the role of the community as an externalized conscience. As the dead necromancer told his living friend, he found fewer Cistercians in hell than monks from other orders because of the care that their abbots provided. Engelhard’s version of a story about the abbot Pons of Grandselve reinforces this point, as it demonstrates the lengths to which a Cistercian abbot might go to fight against his monks’ despair and convince them of divine mercy. Pons was a favorite subject for Cistercian authors. He appeared in six stories in the Exordium magnum, most of which Conrad copied directly from Herbert of Clairvaux’s Liber miraculorum.46 Engelhard’s account is a variant of one these tales, but it displays Engelhard’s own particular emphases. Rather than stressing the importance of confession and penance and the ways Cistercian observances could lead to salvation, Engelhard instead presented Pons as a Christ-like exemplar who modeled for Engelhard’s audiences how they should care for one another. The story focuses on a young man, anonymous in Engelhard’s account, but identified as brother Bernard by both Herbert and Conrad. The youth fell into despair after entering Grandselve.47 Herbert’s and Conrad’s tales describe brother Bernard as terrified by the enormity of his sins and by the strict justice of the divine judge. According to Herbert, Pons tried to persuade the youth that “anyone who has confessed and done penance, whatever the matter, is never deprived of leniency,” but this failed to alleviate his despair.48 Pons then told the youth, “I will make myself co-signer for your salvation. My soul will be required for yours, provided that you persevere, obediently, in this order.”49 This promise, which reflects the requirement in the Benedictine Rule (2.37–38)

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that the abbot “render account” for his monks at the Day of Judgment, gave Bernard the ability to recognize God’s mercy. Bernard did not live long. On his deathbed, he expressed his confidence in his salvation, and he released his abbot from his obligation. Pons had forgotten his promise, and he quizzed Bernard about the source of his confidence. Bernard explained that he had been transported into the presence of God and there received remission of his sins. He reported that he saw deceased Cistercians resting in bliss, that he recognized his own place among them, and that he heard that “all those who persevere unto death in obedience in this way of life will receive from Him eternal salvation.”50 Conrad of Eberbach added to Herbert’s celebration of Cistercian salvation his own praise for the importance of penance and confession. “Let us gird ourselves for penitence, brothers,” he exhorted, “and with this penitence let us come before the face of the Lord in confession and contrition of heart so that hereafter we may deserve to see the face of God in jubilation of heart and exultation of spirit.”51 For Conrad and Herbert, the story demonstrates the importance of confession and contrition, and it reinforces the idea that perseverance in Cistercian observances will lead to salvation. Engelhard’s story focuses on Abbot Pons rather than on the promise of Cistercian salvation. Herbert and Conrad described the relation between Pons and his monk in contractual terms. Pons became the “guarantor” (fideiussor) of Bernard’s salvation and Bernard owed a “debt of sponsorship” to Pons. Engelhard, in comparison, depicted their relationship as familial and based on love. In celebrating the youth’s initial progress as a monk, Engelhard thought Pons became a mother who rejoiced that “he had given birth to such a one in whom Christ was formed.”52 Once the youth fell into despair, the signs became apparent to the whole community. “His face became sadder, his appearance harsher, his words more bitter, his actions more sluggish, his speech less prepared and even more fickle in trivial things.”53 The abbot, again maternal, “attended to his womb so that he could again give birth and reform the deformed form of Christ in his son.”54 He convinced the youth to confess, but the confession only increased the youth’s despair, for he thought that his iniquity was even greater than before he entered the monastery. Terrified that he had lost one of his flock, Pons offered to bear the young man’s sins if he remained in the monastery. Unlike Herbert and Conrad, Engelhard provided an elaborate description of the young man’s joyful relief at this offer: “O! I have suffered a horrible and perpetual prison. O! I have suffered a full and rancid pit. O! I have suffered a fiery sword and all

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kinds of punishment. O! Finally all which he sowed will be soothing to me; all which he inflicted will be sweet to me! O! All these things that have tortured me and I have suffered will be easy and light when I am made in this way secure of remission before God!”55 The young man’s relief, like his despair, was visible in his face. Furthermore, as he died, his deathbed experience was a vision in honor of Pons rather than a promise of Cistercian salvation. He told Pons he had seen two beds in heaven covered in purple silk, but one had a single crown of jewels and gold while the other had two. One bed, he learned, was for him, but the one with two crowns was for Pons. A voice explained the reason: “ ‘Just as Christ laid down his life for us, thus we ought to give our life for our brothers’ [1 John 3:16]. This man fulfilled this, laying down his life for you, and hence he saved both himself and you.”56 Engelhard’s story emphasizes the abbot’s imitation of Christ by sacrificing himself for another. This is not a priestly role. Rather, Pons modeled selfsacrifice for his entire community, as the quote from John explains. Furthermore, by presenting the abbot as a mother as well as a father, the imagery of the story encouraged its audiences to imagine parallels between the abbot and Mary as well as with Christ. Just as Mary gave birth to Christ, so the abbot birthed a monk who developed in the form of Christ. Just as Engelhard’s other stories depict Mary as coaxing and scolding Cistercian monks into reformation, so Pons “charmed, fostered, coaxed, and dug” until he convinced the youth to confess.57 Just as Mary fought off the wolves of anger from one of her monks, Pons lamented that he had not defended his monk against the wolf. Engelhard’s depiction of Mary’s interventions as an idealized abbot became intertwined with his presentation of a real abbot who enacted a maternal responsibility for the spiritual condition of his monks. Even Engelhard’s stories of monastic deaths seldom present deathbed confessions. The descriptions of paired deaths discussed in Chapter 5 substitute human companions for saintly apparitions. They also suggest that Engelhard found this communal companionship more noteworthy than deathbed confessions. When Gotschalk and the young monk died together, Engelhard was among the brothers who stood around Gotschalk’s bed, but he made no mention of Gotschalk’s confession. Instead, he noticed that Gotschalk held a psalter even though he could not read, and that he plucked it as if playing the psaltery. As Gotschalk recited from memory the phrase from Psalm 117, “Open to me the gates of justice and I will go into them and give praise to the Lord,” he died with his finger miraculously pointing to that very passage.58 The young monk died with him so that Gotschalk did not enter

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these gates alone. Similarly, in another story of a paired death, when a monk and a laybrother died together, Engelhard noted their status differences but did not mention a confession or the viaticum. The laybrother, while from a noble background, had wished to become a shepherd so he could “serve those monks who served the altar,” and when he chose the monk who was to die with him, he called him a priest. The story reinforced the spiritual equality of the two men rather than emphasizing one monk’s priestly office.59 In another deathbed story, Engelhard noticed the priestly actions of the abbot, but his tale implied that this abbot’s sense of his own sinfulness prevented him from properly caring for his monks. Engelhard considered Peter Monoculus a model abbot. Peter had been monk and prior of Igny before becoming abbot of Valroy in 1164, abbot of Igny in 1169, and finally abbot of Clairvaux in 1179 just before his death. According to Engelhard, Peter “did not teach anything that he did not do first, showing and acting in all things what he knew to be the will of his Lord.”60 One day, while he and his community sang Lauds, Peter heard a voice repeating “Domine miserere.” The phrase increased the intensity of Peter’s prayer, for he thought the voice referred to him. Only when he heard the striking of the tablet that signaled a dying monk did he hurry to the infirmary to join his community in chanting the litany of saints around the dying man. Amid these prayers, the man died. Peter had been so intent in his recitation that he did not notice that the brothers had signaled to him and then covered the face of the dead man. Only after Peter finished the litany did he uncover the face of the deceased to ask if he wished to confess. Much to everyone’s amazement, the dead man began to breathe, made his confession, and then died again. But rather than emphasizing the abbot’s mistake, Engelhard explained that this rejuvenation stemmed from Peter’s merits, “lest the Lord impute his sins to him.”61 Engelhard described other holy abbots who were willing to take on the sins of their monks, but in this case God intervened so that Peter would not have to bear this responsibility. Engelhard concluded by praising Peter, both as an abbot who cared for his flock and as a holy man who could “speak face to face with angels.”62 Yet it was through a miracle that the dying man confessed, rather than because of his abbot’s efforts. Peter’s humility and his concern for his own sinfulness had made him oblivious to the needs of the monks in his community. In recounting a story of a second Peter, the Cistercian monk who became archbishop of Tarentaise (1141–1174), Engelhard similarly depicted a prelate’s

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difficulty in balancing his own needs with those of his flock. Again, Engelhard praised his subject. Archbishop Peter, Engelhard thought, perfectly fulfilled both the role of a monk and the office of a bishop.63 Once, after Peter preached to a crowd in a city, a man asked him to baptize his son, hoping that Peter’s merits would make the baptism especially blessed. Peter criticized the father’s understanding of the sacrament, but he did not want to extinguish the man’s piety. Still, he was tired, so he asked the father to wait until the next morning. The father fretted that the baby might die overnight, but Peter assured him that his child would not die until he received baptism from Peter’s hand. That night, a terrible fire swept through the town and the man’s house burned to the ground. Unable to rescue his child, the distraught father confronted the bishop, calling him a hypocrite and a liar. The next morning, once the embers had cooled, he went to collect his son’s bones. To his wonder, he found his baby alive, lying in the ashes and playing with his hands. Amazed at the veracity of Peter’s prophecy, the father brought the child to Peter to be baptized; he now recognized Peter as a true friend of God.64 Yet, as with the abbot Peter, the sign of the archbishop Peter’s sanctity was a miracle that repaired a mistake rather than his own careful exercise of his office. A second story about the archbishop also demonstrates that holy men were not immune to errors in their performance of the sacraments. A usurer asked Peter what he should do with the wealth he had accumulated by assessing interest. Peter told him to give two measures to a poor widow and to put aside in a box all the interest he had received. The man did so, thinking this would help his soul, but when he opened the box, he found it full of vipers. Appalled, the usurer returned to Peter, who explained the vipers signified the worth of his profits. If he wished to escape the eternal snakes, Peter told him, he should spend the next night in his money box. The archbishop promised that if he did so, he would emerge unharmed. But the man could not bring himself to enter the box. Engelhard concluded that this usurer, like other vain humans, “considered present things more valuable than the future ones, seeking sweet things and fleeing what was harsh.”65 But the story leaves unmentioned that Peter had set too harsh a penance for this sinner to endure. Engelhard’s stories about the two Peters imply that even holy priests were not immune from errors in their performance of the sacraments. This theme appears in Engelhard’s stories of monastic officials as well. His account of brother Joseph depicts a prior who could not discern that Joseph had

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omitted crucial information about his life in his deathbed confession. Engelhard’s tale of the prior Otto also demonstrates the fallibility of monastic officials. Like Pons who helped the young monk at Grandselve, Otto assisted Engelhard in overcoming his own period of despair.66 But Engelhard recounted that, one day, Otto admired a bolt of cloth that a young monk’s mother had woven for her son, and he expressed his desire to have his own tunic made from such lovely material. The young monk took him at his word and cut the cloth in half. Otto responded with anger and chagrin and claimed the young man had not recognized Otto’s comments as a joke. Otto’s excuses only made things worse; the youth asked why Otto scorned the offering of a poor woman. Abashed, Otto took the cloth and expressed his confidence in a God powerful enough to restore the damage. Miraculously, the cloth returned to its undivided state. Engelhard excused Otto’s behavior by claiming that Otto considered the entire episode to be a joke rather than a sign of sanctity, but Engelhard also insisted it demonstrated Otto’s virtues. In his desire to provide a sign of Otto’s sanctity, Engelhard instead recounted a tale that demonstrated Otto’s human fallibility. Otto’s story appears among a cluster of tales that Engelhard recounted about his friends. In these stories about four men whom he knew personally and who had shaped his own spiritual development, Engelhard emphasized the role of the community in forming a monk’s conscience, but he also questioned whether it was really possible to know the virtues of others. Two of these friends were part of Engelhard’s surrogate family: the deacon Volmar had raised Engelhard after his father died, and the monk Bertolf had also lived in Volmar’s household before becoming a monk. The two other friends were monks from Langheim: the monk Reinbert and the prior Otto. Engelhard thought all four were models of virtue. Volmar was an ideal cleric, rare among the clergy for his chastity, so interested in learning that he would fall asleep with his head in his book, yet so simple that he “cared nothing for profit and everything for piety.”67 Bertolf “copied in himself the image of his nurturer” and “accomplished so much by Volmar’s example that he himself became an example that could be followed in this way by few if any others.”68 Although initially a cleric, Bertolf lived as if a monk, spending his nights in prayer, sleeping on a rug, giving away the proceeds of his prebend to the poor, seldom speaking, never laughing, and living every day as if it were his last. The monk Reinbert also modeled fraternal love, and Otto served as an exemplar who was “humble in his own eyes but elevated in the eyes of others because of his holy life. This blessed man considered this imitable, for he

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made his imitators blessed.”69 Yet Engelhard undermined his celebration of his friends’ virtues. He used his intimacy with them to depict their thoughts and to show each had a good conscience, but he also suggested that such friendship made his accounts unreliable. He recorded only one story that demonstrated Volmar’s simplicity, concerned that if he told more, he would “seem to lie out of love.”70 He also acknowledged that he did not have many miraculous signs of holiness to relate about his friends. The one miraculous event he did record was Otto’s restoration of the young man’s cloth, and that did little to demonstrate virtuous behavior. Engelhard’s stories neither emphasize confessions to a priest nor describe penance as a sacrament. Engelhard admired the pastoral care provided by Cistercian abbots and the Christ-like self-sacrifice of the abbot Pons in caring for his despairing monk, but he suggested that even holy priests could make mistakes, especially when they tried to balance their own spiritual needs with those of their flocks. As did earlier Cistercian authors, Engelhard stressed the role of the monastic community in shaping a monk’s conscience and modeling virtuous behavior, but even when he knew someone well, he could not always find visible signs of their holiness, and he worried that others might mistake his intentions. He found it difficult to discern the signs of a monk’s good conscience; even more difficult was the process of discerning hidden sins.

The Difficulty of Discernment Engelhard was less optimistic than his contemporaries that priests, abbots, or even the community as a whole could uncover hidden sins. Repeatedly, he developed images that suggested the hidden nature of sins. The dead necromancer’s cloak was blackened with apparent and hidden sins; Simon of Sorø saw his soul as an empty dish, black both inside and out; and the gluttonous infirmarian who cut his throat was a “tomb that was whitewashed on the outside but on the inside filled with the bones of the dead and all kinds of filth.”71 Rather than telling stories of saintly abbots and priests with miraculous discernment, Engelhard depicted prelates who made mistakes, who did not recognize the needs of their monks, and who could not elicit the contrition that prevented despair. His accumulation of tales about sinful and damned monks undermined the optimism about Cistercian salvation that the Clairvaux storytellers had expressed, and it brought into question whether

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an intimate community could ensure the spiritual well-being of its inhabitants.72 Engelhard was not alone in worrying about the problem of discernment. Peter Lombard had also considered situations when priests could not recognize hidden sins or false confessions.73 In his Dialogue on Miracles, Caesarius of Heisterbach elaborated on the problem. He gave examples of the common mistakes made by bad confessors, including assigning the wrong penances, refusing to hear confessions, and publicizing private confessions, and he depicted priests who were skeptical of the signs of contrition or who mistook the performance of contrition for the real thing.74 Herbert of Clairvaux and Conrad of Eberbach, in comparison, celebrated holy abbots who could discern the hidden sins of their monks.75 In Conrad’s tales, abbots were exemplars of mercy, at times eliciting contrition and at other times preventing despair.76 Conrad associated such mercy with the abbots’ performance of the sacrament, for these abbots often heard confession and then imposed a much less rigorous penance than the penitents had expected, demonstrating in their own actions the mercy of God.77 Engelhard’s account of Pons and his monk, and his own encounter with the prior Otto, also show that abbots and the community could at times recognize the signs of despair, but most of Engelhard’s stories instead demonstrate the difficulties in locating and discerning character and conscience. In some cases, monks died badly. Unlike other Cistercian story collectors who tended to use stories from non-Cistercian communities or accounts of laybrothers as their negative examples, Engelhard’s cautionary tales mostly used Cistercian monks as exemplars.78 Engelhard even experienced some troubling events personally.79 Yet he did not present these failures as examples of bad abbots. Like the prior Otto or the archbishop Peter, the abbots in his stories were usually conscientious figures who made mistakes or could not overcome the ingrained sinfulness of a monk. Nonetheless, whereas Herbert’s and Conrad’s collections depict an optimism about the salvific qualities of Cistercian life, the lessons of Engelhard’s stories suggest that neither Cistercian observances nor the pastoral care of Cistercian abbots provided a certain path to salvation. Even a story that depicts Cistercian salvation describes an abbot who could not discern the sins of his monks. Engelhard’s tale of the two young monks who died together and returned as ghosts celebrates a holy abbot, but it also demonstrates the abbot’s blindness to one youth’s behavior.80 Engelhard’s account is a variant of a tale that Herbert of Clairvaux and Conrad

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of Eberbach also recounted. Herbert and Conrad described a novice master who had been negligent at labor but who returned in a vision to say that he had been received in heaven.81 Engelhard replaced the novice master with two youths whom the rest of the community considered models of virtuous behavior. After they died, they still obeyed their abbot and appeared in a vision that fulfilled his request that they report whether they needed assistance in the afterlife. Engelhard suggested that this abbot—who may again have been Pons of Grandselve—was again willing to offer his own merits in security for theirs.82 The youths assured him that they were in heaven, but one also explained that he was guilty of singularity. “Stubbornly determined on a holy singularity and uniqueness,” he told the abbot, “I wished to live more strictly and was continually content with one meal and one cowl, even though our rule provides and wishes a monk to accept two cowls and two meals. As I transgressed, I labored cold and hungry more than the others, and I have accepted less.”83 Engelhard concluded the story by focusing on the monks’ virtues and sins, telling his audience that he recounted the story “as a precaution to preserve cleanliness, as a reminder to avoid singularity, and as a consolation to all souls of good will.”84 He did not elaborate on the abbot’s offer of his own merits in security for those of his young monks. Instead, by emphasizing that the young men died together, he showed them drawing on the communal merits of the order for their heavenly reward. At the same time, his tale acknowledged but dismissed the efficacy of prayers and masses for the dead. Although the abbot had asked the monks to return so that he could assist them if needed, neither ghost asked for help.85 By substituting singularity for negligence at labor, Engelhard’s version of this tale makes explicit the difficulty of discernment. It depicits the problem of singularity that Bernard had described in his Steps of Humility and Pride, for the young monk desired to seem holy rather than to be holy, and he wished to live “more strictly than the others” without the consent of his abbot. Bernard had worried that some “of the more simple-minded” in a community might be misled by such behavior into thinking such a monk was virtuous.86 In Engelhard’s story, it is not only the simpleminded but the entire monastery that misinterpreted the young monk’s appearance and thought him more holy than he was. Only at his ghostly return did the abbot learn about his behavior. Engelhard did not emphasize the abbot’s blindness to the sin of singularity any more than Conrad and Herbert stressed his ignorance of the monk’s sin of negligence. Nonetheless, the choice of sin is telling, allowing Engelhard’s story to demonstrate that even

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saintly abbots might not be able to notice sinful intentions hidden under a holy exterior. Good abbots also could not always prevent their monks’ despair. In one tragic tale, Engelhard told of an abbot who recognized a monk’s spiritual difficulties from his appearance but still could not prevent his suicide. The story is Engelhard’s alone; there is no parallel in the other Cistercian collections. Engelhard did not wish to name the monastery, but he implied the event happened in a Cistercian community. He described a carpenter who seemed so useful and affable that “all and one sought his friendship.”87 As with many of Engelhard’s stories, the community could not recognize hidden sins, but Engelhard’s narrative voice informed the story’s audience about character and motivations that the monks and abbot did not recognize. According to Engelhard, this woodworking monk “burned up by that fire which was detested by the apostle” and “was one of those whom the apostle called ‘soft.’ [I Corinthians 6:10].”88 His sin was probably masturbation. Engelhard remarked that the carpenter “had for a long time treated himself badly, without hope of repentance or confession.”89 When he hurt his hand, he went into a decline and wondered if the wound to his hand was the work of the devil rather than God. The abbot did not observe the signs of the carpenter’s sexual activity but he did recognize signs of despair. Engelhard thought this abbot “a good and prudent man, trained by Solomon to diligently inspect the faces of his flock. He wished to know the conscience of the sick brothers, not deceived by the sickness, since it is impossible to become sick without a cause.”90 Just as Pons had done with his young monk, this abbot gradually and patiently gained the carpenter’s confidence. His tactics varied: he warned, he empathized, and “he opened his conscience, prepared to carry with him whatever it was that had so strongly vexed his soul.”91 Like Pons, this abbot also was willing to bear the sins of his monks. His perseverance paid off; moved by compunction, the carpenter made his confession, admitting that he had “served God in public but the enemy in secret” and that he had not previously confessed his sins, nor done penance or made satisfaction for them.92 Confession did not ameliorate the carpenter’s problems any more than it had helped Pons’s young monk. The young monk, however, ultimately learned the nature of divine mercy; the carpenter did not. He rejected the abbot’s solace and, as Engelhard described it, “he was condemned by his own judgment.” Engelhard elaborated: “The hatred in his heart overthrew him, and accordingly he regretted that he had confessed, and he was led by the

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shame and sadness that leads to death.”93 The abbot could see the carpenter’s struggle, and he even asked monks to watch him. But when the watchers joined the other monks in chapter to hear a feast day sermon, the carpenter did not appear. The abbot interrupted his sermon to ask where he was, and all ran to search for him. Engelhard’s choppy language describes their anxiety: “They searched in the church, in the cells of the servants, inside and out, but they found him neither here nor there. Still they searched, and behold! He was drowned and submerged in the latrine, a pig bathing in his wallow. He had suffered a death as disgraceful as it was terrible.”94 Engelhard blamed this death on the carpenter, not the abbot. He thought the abbot had done all that he could, “but his actions did not bear fruit; he sowed his words on rocks and thorns and the birds bore them away; he did not accomplish anything.”95 Since the carpenter rejected the abbot’s care and refused to recognized God’s mercy, all he had left was despair. At times, Cistercian abbots neglected the problems in their monasteries. Engelhard claimed that he himself witnessed the circumstances surrounding another dreadful death of a Cistercian monk. The protagonist in this story worked in the infirmary and appeared “dutiful in all things, and he prepared for all what each wished of him,” even though rumors implied he was abusing his position.96 In fact, Engelhard suggested that the community’s role as an exterior conscience had been compromised by self-interest, for the rumors “were firmly denied by those who made use of his services.”97 On the Feast of the Nativity, the infirmarian took communion with the rest of his community, but when he went on his rounds afterward, he did not return. The next morning, Engelhard and other monks found him in the cellar, “nude, out of his mind, and dying.” Engelhard remarked dryly, “this nudity gave birth to nothing good in the conscience of each of the monks.”98 Even when the monks found remnants of meat in the cellar, they did not want to believe the signs of wrongdoing. They carried the dying man from the cellar, gave him unction, and sang the psalms over him; after he died, they performed the rites of burial. Only when they found a woman hiding in a monastic cell did the abbot realize he had a problem. The woman explained that she had slept with the monk but when she returned from a call of nature, she found him lying senseless and “did not believe anything other than that the demon whom she said he had served by sinning with [her] had killed him while in her likeness.”99 The abbot still wanted to keep the matter quiet but that was no longer possible. The case was submitted to judges who ordered the body removed from the cemetery.100 Despite this horrifying conclusion, Engelhard

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left his criticism of the abbot implicit, even though the abbot had ignored the signs of his monk’s sins. Engelhard offered more explicit criticism of non-Cistercian abbots who made pastoral errors. His account of the infirmarian who hid his gluttony, cut his throat, and was saved from demons by Mary’s intervention is one such tale. Conrad of Eberbach had recounted a version of this story to discourage the negligence of confessors and ensure that abbots responded when a monk asked to confess. Engelhard recognized the abbot’s negligence, noting that the priest to whom the infirmarian wished to confess had waited until after mass to hear confession. But he focused on the infirmarian’s deceptive confession rather than the priest’s delay. In confessing, the infirmarian admitted only minor faults and sins that were not his own, and he thus “was made one with Judas.”101 After his false confession, his appearance changed and made his evil apparent, but in this story, no one noticed or intervened. Ultimately, Mary intervened when the abbot did not, and her mercy saved the man from demons and helped his spiritual recovery. Another negligent abbot contributed to the dreadful death of a proud monk. Engelhard set this tale among monks at the Hirsau-affiliated abbey of Schaffhausen. This monastery had a large dormitory with room for a multitude of monks, but one of its beds was so luxurious “that he who held it could put himself forward as a prince of royal blood.”102 The bed provoked so much dissention among the monks that the abbot, “a man zealous for discipline,” intervened. He excommunicated the bed, claiming it had “disturbed the peace, destroyed charity and divided their unity.”103 After that, most of the monks avoided the area, but the chamberlain, “knowing but despising what his abbot had sowed,” slept in “that place of anathema.”104 In the middle of the night, the monks woke to hear a great commotion with groaning and the gnashing of teeth. They lit lights but the area around the bed remained dark. They brought crosses and relics, they scattered holy water, and they sang psalms and litanies. When the darkness finally lifted, they found the chamberlain dead on the floor, “his eyes bulging, his mouth foaming, his face ferocious, and all his limbs flung about and deformed in torment.”105 Like the suicide of the monk in the sewer, this death finally made the chamberlain’s character visible. Although Engelhard had noted earlier that the chamberlain was “proud and arrogant” and “knew himself to have power but did not know himself to be under power,” the abbot had not recognized that the source of the discord originated in the chamberlain rather than the bed.106 Once the chamberlain died, however, all could “see in him

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his wretchedness, condemn his disobedience, trample on his pride, and approve his sentence, because God opposes the proud and grants grace to the humble.”107 The didactic nature of this death had real effects. The monk Chuno, who had left Langheim because he could not endure the difficulty of Cistercian manual labor, was so terrified by what he saw at Schaffhausen that he returned to Langheim, bringing this story with him. Engelhard’s stories encouraged their audiences to imagine what they could not see. Many taught an interpretation of signs by invoking images that audiences could blend with familiar Biblical and liturgical passages, thus helping them imagine the heavenly reality that the signs signified. The signs that displayed conscience, however, did not resonate with Cistercian religious culture in the same way, and Engelhard found it more difficult to imagine the state of another’s conscience than to recognize the hidden meanings of the Eucharist or labor or prayer. Even though he praised the care offered by Cistercian abbots, he did not think such care inevitably led to salvation. In fact, despite the intimacy and surveillance of a Cistercian monastery, a person could hide both actions and intentions, and abbots could not always discern their monks’ despair or offer the right remedies.

Teaching Discernment with Stories Engelhard recognized that his stories of sinful monks and pastoral failures fit uneasily in a collection of tales that celebrated the holiness of the Cistercian order. His praise for the Cistercians was often backhanded, for he described the mixed nature of life on earth in which tares always existed among the wheat. He justified his inclusion of terrifying tales by insisting that the fear they elicited would foster spiritual formation, even if they depicted abbots and communities who did not provide clear guidance for their monks. To help his stories teach, he employed narrative techniques that encouraged his audiences to recognize what the protagonists in the tales could not see, and he modeled in his stories the emotional responses he expected from those who heard them. In his texts he sought to preserve the face to face characteristics of his monastic community while using written stories that taught both the self-scrutiny necessary for developing a good conscience and the recognition of a merciful God whose love could prevent despair. For the nuns and monks in Engelhard’s audiences, storytelling and the circulation of texts replaced personal and communal contact. Engelhard’s compositions spread

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Cistercian practices beyond the intimate communities within which his protagonists resided. Engelhard wanted his tales to encourage the spiritual progression of those in his audience. He told the nuns of Wechterswinkel that he sent them accounts of “honest things” that would teach them; he hoped his stories would be “useful to those who believed and wished to progress” and that they would “gladden the hearts” of those who read them. He noted when his protagonists should serve as examples for imitation and when his stories provided “remedies for temptation,” and he offered models for obedience, chastity, humility, hard work, and fervent devotion to the divine office.108 He also offered negative examples, demonstrating the problems with anger, dishonesty and deception, and pride.109 Even more than proper behavior, Engelhard’s stories directed their audiences toward a proper disposition or a particular emotion. They offered solace, consolation, and comfort, encouraged faith, and offered joy and delight.110 At times Engelhard even turned these emotions into a spiritual progression. After recounting his story of the converted Jew in Cologne, he concluded that he told such a tale as a “public crier of Christ’s praise” since “Christ carries away the doubts from those tempted by unbelief, he inspires fear in the unbelieving, he discloses the weariness of the negligent, he sharpens the zeal of the industrious, and finally, he increases the incentive for perfect love in those who are fervent.”111 In moving from doubt to fear to love, Engelhard’s progression associated the emotions elicited by his story with the spiritual formation of his monastic life. The scrutiny of the conscience was central to this process of spiritual growth. Twelfth-century Cistercian authors described their communities as an externalized conscience whose members could earn the respect of others and teach through example. Guerric of Igny wrote that it was important to have “a witness to your goodness both within your conscience and among your brothers,” while other Cistercians thought that observing the visible contrition of others could spark reform.112 But Engelhard’s epistemological disjunction between visible signs and the hidden realities that they signified made the discernment of the conscience more difficult As did Bernard of Clairvaux in Steps of Humility and Pride, Engelhard questioned the discernment of both community and abbot and suggested that some sins might remain hidden. Patristic authors had expressed the idea that God alone might know the secrets of the heart, and they drew on Psalm 7 and 1 Samuel 16:7 to support their position. Augustine of Hippo, for instance, interpreted Jesus’ actions in raising the dead as signifying the sins of the heart, of deeds, and of

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habit, and he considered sins of the heart to be unknowable to others.113 Already by the Carolingian period, however, theologians expected people to confess hidden sins to a priest, a point that a late eleventh-century treatise, De vera et falsa penitentia, reiterated. The twelfth-century interest in intention expanded the role of the conscience by breaking apart Augustine’s link between will and action and allowing the conscience to consider whether to consent to desires.114 In addition, the process of training priests for their pastoral responsibilities emphasized their role as skilled doctors who could cure hidden diseases by convincing sinners to confess.115 Yet the gradual development of inquisitorial techniques, with their relation to confessional practices, suggests that fears that the hidden might not become apparent could create anxieties about the social dangers of these undetected diseases and at times could even foster the construction of dangers that reflected the fears and ambitions of those who searched for them.116 Rather than reacting to a fear of hidden sins by advocating the role of a priest as doctor or skilled questioner, Engelhard offered stories. He responded to the failure of priestly and community discernment by emphasizing the tension in his tales between what his protagonists recognized and what his audiences knew. He was not the only Cistercian storyteller to write as an omniscient narrator and to offer commentary that accompanied his accounts, but his techniques differed from his contemporaries. Conrad of Eberbach told stories with didactic expositions at their conclusion, while Caesarius of Heisterbach introduced and ended his tales in pedagogical conversation with his novice. Engelhard’s prose, in comparison, oscillates between short vivid descriptions and longer authorial comments. Often his narrator knew more than the protagonists in the tale, and often Engelhard framed his tales in a liturgical and Biblical context that helped the audience interpret what the characters did not understand. In the account of the monk found with a woman, for instance, Engelhard’s comment about the monk’s nakedness highlights a problem that the abbot and monks in the story refused to see. His tale of the converted Jew of Cologne alternates between the Jew’s inability to interpret his vision and Engelhard’s expectation that his audience immediately understood the vision’s relation to a Christian interpretation of Isaiah. Even his story of brother Joseph, written primarily in Joseph’s voice, is framed by a narrator who tells the audience more than the protagonists in the tale recognize. In adopting the position of an omniscient narrator, Engelhard reminded his audiences that God could see what humans could not. He did this even

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in his tales of virtuous monks. The abbot Peter Monoculus, who worried about the state of his own soul, did not display his virtues though his actions but still was observed by the “inspector of the heart.”117 When describing the monk whom the angel assisted in singing the office, Engelhard remarked that God “who searches the heart and the kidneys [renes]” pitied him and wished to make him an example to others (Psalm 7:10).118 In the case of the infirmarian found dead with a woman, the community and abbot did not notice his sins, but “the heavenly witness watched over him; He saw and was not pleased and prepared to punish him.”119 The same was the case for the carpenter who committed suicide; Engelhard warned that God saw his sins even if they were hidden from his monastic companions. “This is what people valued in him, seeing his face,” Engelhard told his audience, “but God who sees into the heart, saw differently.”120 Engelhard offered stories that taught the scrutiny of the conscience by structuring his tales so that the audience encountered the protagonists from the same vantage point as God and learned to see into their hearts. At the conclusion of his story of the two young men who returned to their abbot as ghosts, Engelhard made this intent explicit. After the abbot recounted the story in chapter, his community “inspected themselves more intently.”121 Audiences of monks and nuns in more distant communities could do the same. Perhaps they read the stories from a text, or perhaps they heard them read aloud in chapter, but in either case, they could find in Engelhard’s tales lessons that taught them to consider their own thoughts and intentions as God did, even if others could not see or interpret the signs. As a result, they could learn to reform their conscience even without the pastoral assistance of a priest or abbot. The danger with such self-scrutiny, however, was that a fear of God’s judgment could lead to despair. Bernard of Clairvaux’s sermons on the Song of Songs explored the possibility that fear of God might create despair, and he advocated the importance of balancing a fear of judgment with the love that stemmed from a recognition of divine mercy. Bernard described the repentant soul as kissing the feet of the Bridegroom, but because it kissed both feet, it understood the necessity of both justice and mercy. “It is not expedient to kiss one without the other,” Bernard wrote. “One who only thinks of judgement will fall into the pit of despair, and one who falsely flatters God’s mercy will produce the worst kind of security.122 Nor did Bernard stay at the Bridegroom’s feet. He described the soul as making ointments of devotion and piety from the patience and mercy that the Bridegroom’s breasts produced, and he thought these ointments tempered

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the bitter ointment of contrition that the soul produced when it crushed its sins “in the mortar of its conscience.” These gifts of devotion and lovingkindness prevented human despair.123 Cistercian observances also taught monks that repentance would be met with mercy. Even discipline within the monastic chapter demonstrated compassion and fraternal care as well as punishment. The monks not only accused one another of faults but also interceded for each other. If a monk received a beating, the monk who struck him would help him dress afterward and make a ritual display of compassion. As well as this public confession during chapter, monks could confess less apparent sins privately during the period for reading after chapter.124 Engelhard’s stories show the dangers of inspecting the conscience too rigidly. Some of his protagonists developed a fear that led to despair. Engelhard described the young monk whom Pons saved as “overwhelmed by his heap of sins, a torrent of evil, and a sea of injustice. He could not reach God, since God is just and returns to each according to his own work.”125 Only after his abbot modeled the loving self-sacrifice and mercy of Christ could the monk emerge from his despair. As a youth, Engelhard himself experienced something similar and found help in the encouragement of the prior Otto. Similarly, the woodworker could not effectively confess, for even though he received care from his abbot, he “cast back the words of solace and overthrowing himself in his foul refuge, he turned the hatred of his heart back upon himself.”126 In his detestation of his own sins and his refusal to accept help, he could not imagine that God could be merciful. At times Engelhard thought fear, horror, and terror had a didactic purpose. In the story of the monk found naked and dead after sleeping with a woman, Engelhard hoped that the disinterment of the monk’s body would “terrify the living so that they should fear to sin where there is not even pity for the body of the dead.”127 In his writer’s apology at the end of his collection, Engelhard again justified his inclusion of stories of sinful monks, telling the nuns of Wechterswinkel that “we have added [accounts of] unworthy deeds, showing their outcome to be without honor, and even with horror, so that those who are not called by the good to good things are recalled from evil through terror.”128 But in the story of the woodworker, he sought to temper this fear and horror. The monk’s death, he wrote, was “the kind of thing which is terrifying to those doing unjust things,” but at the same time, the monks who saw this awful death “were purged by their terror and ‘washed their hands in the blood of the sinner.’ ”129 With this quote from Psalm 57,

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Engelhard reminded his audience not only to fear God’s judgment but to rejoice in God’s punishment of the wicked, for then they could say with the psalm, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous: surely there is a God who judges on earth.” The dreadful death of the proud chamberlain at Schaffhausen had a similar message. Engelhard’s tale encouraged the observers to “see in him his wretchedness, condemn his disobedience, and trample on his pride; and approve his sentence, because God opposes the proud and grants grace to the humble.”130 More frequently, Engelhard’s stories helped their audiences imagine a God who was merciful as well as just. Engelhard often noted that he wanted his stories to provide solace and comfort to their audiences. Protagonists such as the abbot Pons modeled an earthly imitation of Christ’s love and mercy. And, in the cases where abbots failed, the Virgin Mary appeared to reform wayward monks, or the divine gift of a miracle repaired a mistake made by an otherwise virtuous man. As Engelhard insisted, a good conscience was the glory of his order. He could not guarantee Cistercian salvation, but he did offer the nuns of Wechterswinkel texts through which they too could develop a good conscience, envision a God who was both just and merciful, and share in the culture of Cistercian monks. Engelhard’s compositions lie at the cusp of new ways of reading. Ineke van ’t Spijker argues that by the end of the twelfth century, monastic reading as a process of rumination began to be supplemented by more instrumental approaches to texts. Rather than enacting and embodying a text, devotional readers became subjects who used texts to imagine themselves in reference to their experiences outside the text.131 Engelhard’s stories still expect their audiences to bring the texts into themselves so they could identify with the thoughts, experiences, and emotions of the protagonists, blend the stories with their experiences and their liturgical culture, and make the unseen seem real. At the same time, however, the tales encourage their audiences to imagine themselves at a distance from the stories, to learn what the protagonists did not know, and to create in themselves a subjectivity independent from the text. Although Engelhard’s stories maintain their oral qualities and describe face to face communities, they also suggest that it had become easier to interpret a text than a person. Stories could shape their readers and teach them to discern the secrets of the heart. In offering his collection of exempla to the nuns of Wechterswinkel, Engelhard articulated a culture that monks and nuns could share, not through the intermediary of an abbot or a priest, but instead through the circulation of texts.

Conclusion

Engelhard of Langheim articulated a religiosity that resisted the clericalization of monastic life and found sacramental qualities in everyday objects and behaviors. Writing in the last years of the twelfth century, at a time when the performance of the mass and priestly administration of penance had replaced monastic intercessory prayer as the central rituals of Christian society, Engelhard downplayed the importance of interactions with priests. He dedicated his collection of stories to the Cistercian nuns of Wechterswinkel just a few years before Cistercian abbots, meeting in Chapter General, began to regulate Cistercian nuns and to express their concerns about the responsibility of monks for the pastoral care of women. We do not know how the nuns of Wechterswinkel responded to his stories, nor how frequently these women had contact with priests and received the sacraments, but Engelhard’s stories offered them an alternative to a spirituality focused on the pastoral and sacerdotal actions of the clergy. His tales encouraged the nuns to imagine sacramental connections between heaven and earth that existed alongside the mass, and they implied that monastic discipline, self-scrutiny, and a recognition of divine mercy could teach the development of a good conscience. Engelhard did not direct these lessons toward women alone. Instead, his stories for the nuns depicted Cistercian monks, and he shared his tales with men as well as women. In so doing, he assumed Cistercian nuns and monks followed the same observances and participated in the same monastic culture.1 His stories illuminate a late-twelfth-century spirituality for nuns and monks that provided an alternative to a priestly emphasis on the performance of the sacraments and a clerical interest in reforming the laity. Engelhard’s tales belong within a long monastic tradition of recording stories about the teachings of holy people. Starting in late antiquity, monastic authors composed texts that linked saint, author, and audience in a shared process of spiritual development. The lessons in these accounts dovetailed with their authors’ optimism that humans could shape their own reformation.

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Gregory the Great’s stories of Italian holy men instructed his audiences in Christian virtue, while Peter the Venerable of Cluny celebrated his monastery as a religious center that channeled the miraculous works of God to earth and transformed his monks. Although the Cistercian collections of exempla participated in a transition that culminated in the friars’ encyclopedic collections of stories as preaching aides, they also remained part of this monastic lineage. Their authors offered Clairvaux rather than the Italian peninsula or Cluny as the center for spiritual reform, and they used their stories to celebrate their holiness and to instruct their monks in the traditions of their order. Like other monastic storytellers, Cistercian authors emphasized the miraculous actions of their holy men as signs of the divine presence on earth. Engelhard composed his book of exempla toward the eastern edge of the Cistercian order. His is one of the few collections of Cistercian stories that did not originate from a monastery associated with Clairvaux, and the only one dedicated to a community of women. Unlike most of the other Cistercian authors, Engelhard did not work from an archive of written tales. As a result, his collection illuminates how Cistercian stories changed as they spread orally across the order. In addition, Engelhard refused to place Bernard of Clairvaux at the center of his work, rejecting tales that were already well known and circulating in texts. He joined his contemporaries in praise of Cistercians, but his collection demonstrates little of the confidence in Cistercian salvation that the other twelfth-century collections expressed. Whereas other Cistercian authors viewed Cistercian life as earthly penance and found a divine presence working through the actions of saintly figures, Engelhard instead emphasized the unseen and heavenly analogues of everyday Cistercian practices. He taught his audiences of nuns and monks to understand monastic life sacramentally. Engelhard’s distinctive monastic spirituality developed out of his regional networks. He lived at a distance from the urbanizing world of northern France and the lower Rhine, and he developed relationships with religious communities in southeastern Germany and Austria that shared his interest in collecting monastic narratives and in exploring the spiritual equality of nuns and monks. The patronage of the Andechs-Merania may have furthered Engelhard’s interest in religious women by linking him to a family that celebrated a lineage of holy daughters and nieces. Engelhard’s regional connections intersected with his efforts to maintain a traditional Cistercian culture that centered more on monastic prayer and contemplation than on the performance of the sacraments. His writings show him trying to preserve and

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communicate these Cistercian traditions in a new environment and a changing society. His efforts to preserve the old created something new. In offering the nuns of Wechterswinkel exemplary stories about Cistercian monks, Engelhard’s stories illuminate religious possibilities for Cistercian women that are not usually visible in extant sources. At the turn of the thirteenth century, Cistercian abbots had not officially recognized the nuns of Wechterswinkel as part of the order but, like many other Cistercian women, these nuns had adopted at least some of the customs and institutes of Cistercian monks. Twelfth-century Cistercian monks who wrote letters and texts to religious women tended to advocate forms of religiosity that they thought particularly suitable to women. Engelhard’s tales, in comparison, reflect the assumptions of Cistercian women who sought to follow the customs of the men, and his gift of stories put into practice an implied equality between men and women that Cistercian authors did not usually articulate. Such expressions of spiritual equality between the sexes were more common in Germanic monasteries associated with the Hirsau reforms, monasteries with which Engelhard interacted.2 The story of brother Joseph demonstrates that a figure whom Engelhard considered a woman could follow male customs, and it taught that both women and men could progress from weakness to strength. Also, like the Hirsau communities whose expressions of spiritual equality between the sexes accompanied a physical separation of monks and nuns that made the presence of women nearly invisible, Engelhard’s insistence that women not imitate Joseph expressed an anxiety that Cistercian women might join communities of men. He considered nuns and monks together as a single audience that shared common practices and common texts but not common space. Engelhard depicted a religious culture for both Cistercian men and women, but this did not mean that gender was irrelevant to his work. He employed gendered imagery throughout his collection, but he did so in a way that identified the particular sociological status of his audience as neither male priests nor lay women. As his story of brother Joseph demonstrates, he tried but failed to use the distinction between strength and weakness as a marker of sexual difference. Joseph’s experiences suggest that women who followed Cistercian practices could encounter and endure the same difficulties as men, but his tale also hints that metaphorical shifts in gender identity might become real. Perhaps Joseph, who looked like a woman, was really a man; perhaps Joseph, who had seemed a man while alive, had become a woman upon death, with a female body that signified a female soul. Yet

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unlike Bernard of Clairvaux and those who followed Bernard’s interpretations of the Song of Songs, Engelhard articulated little interest in nuptial imagery and the idea of the monastic soul as Christ’s bride. Instead, his fascination with the disjunction between the apparent and the real created in Joseph a figure of indeterminate gender who demonstrated that both monks and nuns could overcome their feminine weakness and develop a virile strength with which they could triumph in their spiritual quest. Engelhard knew Bernard’s interpretation of the Song of Songs. When he recounted the saintly Mechthild’s contemplative experiences, he echoed Bernard’s language. Yet even in the passages that portrayed Christ as welcoming Mechthild into his wine cellar and setting her love in order, Engelhard could not imitate Bernard’s interweaving of Biblical language and personal experience because he had no evidence for Mechthild’s divine encounters to which to apply his metaphors. Similarly, in the story of the young woman who died to marry Christ, Engelhard’s story focuses on the mother’s cloth rather than the daughter’s marriage. For Bernard, marital imagery was central to his understanding of the encounter of Christ and the soul. Engelhard, in comparison, chose a different set of metaphors to help his audiences imagine the connections between heaven and earth. Rather than using conjugal language that transported the soul away from the ordinary, he instead used images of mothers and children through which the divine could become immanent in the everyday.3 For many Cistercian authors, Mary was the quintessential mother.4 Cistercian theology is deeply incarnational, emphasizing God’s willingness to become human and Mary’s willingness to serve as the vessel in which divinity and humanity combine. Mary’s compassionate suffering in response to her son’s sacrifice modeled for other humans an imitation of Christ. Even more, her maternal role in bringing Christ to earth paralleled a priest’s powers of consecration, and her role of intercessor mediated between a penitent and Christ as did a priest who heard confession. Already by the late twelfth century, the Cistercians offered tales of Mary as the Mother of Mercy interceding with her son, and by the thirteenth century, this image of Mary as intercessor became widespread.5 Engelhard found his mothers elsewhere. In his collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel, Mary appears only once with her child, and in this brief story, Mary sacrifices her baby on the altar.6 Instead, it is the monks in Engelhard’s stories who become mothers. The abbot Pons nurtured his despairing novice, first rejoicing that he had given birth to such a youth, and

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then later becoming a mother in his efforts to save him, “attending to his womb so that he could again give birth and reform the the deformed form of Christ in his son.”7 The monk Gotschalk gave birth to himself, seeing his own reformation in the form of the small child within his chest. Men could nurture as well as women. Engelhard praised his foster father Volmar as the one who “cherished and nurtured” him, while the man who gave up his family to become a monk longed for his children as well as for his wife. It was a father, not a mother, who asked Peter of Tarentaise to baptize his child and who became distraught when he thought the baby had died in the fire. Engelhard associated such nurturing, whether performed by a man or a woman, with the process of self-formation and the reform of others. Engelhard’s Mary had few such maternal characteristics. Instead, she acted as a good abbot, disciplining, scolding and rewarding her monks. At times, she intervened in a monastery when an abbot did not. She whipped away the wolves of anger after a monk turned the correction of the chapter house into a brawl, and she rescued the gluttonous infirmarian from demons after his companions ignored his sins. When an abbot failed to convince a wayward monk to stay in the monastery rather than return to his family, Mary succeeded in persuading him to remain a monk, but only after threatening to throw him into the dragon-filled pit that held his wife and children. Occasionally Mary was gentler, such as when she “played” with her monks, making puns that taught them to consider the relation of voluntary choice to willfulness and pleasure. Only when she dismembered the child at the altar did she model self-sacrifice. Even in this case, she was not a passive vessel; she held the knife and made the offering herself. As was common, Engelhard’s Mary demonstrated mercy by helping those devoted to her, but rather than interceding to solicit Christ’s intervention, she acted on her own and encouraged those she corrected. Just as Engelhard’s Mary acted with authority, so did the female saint that Engelhard celebrated. In his vita of Mechthild of Diessen, Engelhard compared Mechthild to a series of strong Biblical women, including Judith and Esther, both of whom triumphed over their enemies.8 He even cited Proverbs 31:10, noting that “this strong woman clothes herself in the spirit of a man.”9 The one time he depicted Mechthild as ill or weak, he invoked the apostle Paul’s weakness rather than the weakness of women, again suggesting that the attributes of strength and weakness crossed between the sexes.10 In serving first as magistra of the community of regular canons at Diessen and then as abbess of the nuns at Edelstetten, Mechthild acted as a good abbot,

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mixing action with contemplation and discipline with exhortation. In comparison with other Cistercian authors who used maternal imagery to temper the authority of male abbots, Engelhard instead described women with authority who acted as men to maintain the well-being of their communities.11 By employing Marian imagery to suggest that men and women could nurture themselves and others and act with authority, Engelhard articulated a nonpriestly religiosity that nuns and monks could share. Rather than suggesting that Mary’s maternity paralleled a priestly confection of Christ in the Eucharist, he presented the soul as a child to be fostered and nurtured through a monastic process of spiritual development and discipline. Like an abbot, Mary encouraged this process. She scolded and encouraged the nuns and monks who already lived in communities dedicated to her, and she prodded others, such as Simon of Sorø, to become Cistercian. Engelhard’s stories worked in conjunction with the discipline provided by monastic customs and practices. By offering language and imagery that resonated with the liturgical language and behaviors within the monastery, his tales helped nuns and monks develop dispositions that would sustain them through the process of spiritual development and encouraged them to have faith in the transcendent value of their life on earth. Engelhard encouraged nuns and monks to imagine everyday practices and objects as sacramental. Even after Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard suggested sacramental signs could contain and effect the grace they signified, Engelhard retained an Augustinian conception of sacrament as a “sacred sign” whose efficacy depended on the faith of the recipient. Like Bernard of Clairvaux, Engelhard combined an Augustinian understanding of sacrament with a confidence that the entirety of monastic life taught a conformity to Christ’s example and sacrifice. Engelhard retained Bernard’s emphasis on the sacrality of monastic practices, but he articulated it in a new intellectual and social context in which early scholastic theologians had defined specific sacraments as the central means of connecting the human to the divine. In comparison to the Clairvaux story collectors who celebrated Bernard’s sanctity while at the same time shifting their focus toward a sacerdotal administration of the sacraments, Engelhard’s tales show that the labor and prayers of nuns and monks could produce objects—whether sweat, prayer, cloth, or manuscripts—with sacramental qualities. His stories, read in the context of monastic life, encouraged their audiences to discern signs of the divine on earth and, through this interpretation of sacramental signs, to develop in faith.

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Although Engelhard did not employ Hugh of St. Victor’s new definition of sacrament, his ideas dovetailed with Hugh’s in other ways. Hugh himself did not fully apply his new definition to individual sacraments, and he maintained a monastic conception of the moral process of self-formation, albeit one that he combined with his interest in categorizing and analyzing forms of knowledge. For Hugh as for Engelhard, sacramental signs could resemble their transcendent reality only if understood in the context of Christian history, Christian ritual, and the formation of the Christian individual. Even more, Engelhard’s interest in “visual signs” echoed Hugh’s position that a viewer with a reformed intellect could locate divine signs in natural objects and recognize a progression from the visible to the invisible. Unlike Conrad of Eberbach, who insisted that faith was a confidence in things unseen, and unlike Caesarius of Heisterbach, who thought that sight on its own could assuage doubt, Engelhard offered stories with “visible signs” whose interpretations helped his audiences understand connections between heaven and earth. Just as Hugh described faith as a sacramental sign that grew as a person cleaned the mirror of the heart, so Engelhard offered the visible signs in his stories as inculcating faith. The more monks and nuns reformed themselves, the more they could recognize how the signs in his tales resembled a transcendent reality and the more their faith confirmed the holiness of their life on earth. By teaching this sacramental imagination, Engelhard’s stories make the transcendent seem real. Engelhard’s language blends the images within his tales with the broad array of images and language that the monks and nuns enacted in their monastic practices and even in their lives before they joined a religious community. Biblical verses, psalms, and other liturgical language offer images of mothers and babies, cloth, bread and wine, blood and sweat, and dragons and wolves, whose meanings intermingled with the figures and images within Engelhard’s stories but also with the audiences’ experiences of their families, their labor, their prayer, and their everyday life. As Engelhard’s story of the Jew who converted to Christianity demonstrates, this sacramental imagination could become self-referential, even circular, in the way it created meaning.12 Engelhard’s tale did not prove that Christ was present in the Eucharist so much as confirm what his audiences already understood. It reinforced their knowledge by intertwining the vision of the baby with the Biblical passages whose Christian interpretations insisted that this baby was Christ. Further, it asked the nuns and monks who heard the story to imagine their own experiences with babies and how they might respond to finding a

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baby in the host. The Jew’s vision alone neither proved the truth of Christianity nor convinced him to convert, but once he understood the vision in a Christian frame and with the right disposition, he and the Christian community at Cologne together experienced the baby and the light as connecting heaven and earth. The emotions Engelhard expected his stories to evoke also helped his audiences consider the transcendent as real. Frequently, Engelhard ended his stories by enumerating the dispositions he thought his tales might elicit, and he structured them so that his audiences could model their own emotional responses on the responses of the tales’ protagonists. Again in the story of the Jew from Cologne, Engelhard portrayed the man’s conversion as a change in heart, and he suggested this movement from fear to love was a necessary component of his audiences’ spiritual development as well. He described an emotional progression that dovetailed with the central goal of monastic life, in which difficult ascetic practices became easier as a person learned “the love that casts out fear” and internalized communal discipline as a love of God. By encouraging his audiences to model their own emotions on the experiences of his protagonists, Engelhard made the reality of the emotions outside the stories identical to the emotions within and blurred the separation between his stories and everyday life. Engelhard’s stories rely on the example of other people to model behaviors and emotions, but they also show the difficulty of imagining the hidden thoughts and behaviors of another person. In fact, it was harder to discern the disposition of another person than it was to imagine the transcendent reality of earthly signs. Engelhard’s stories illustrate ideas that Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard had posited earlier in the century. Both authors reconsidered Augustine’s tight linkage between will and action to suggest the possibility of hiding misguided intentions under a seemingly holy exterior. Bernard described a monk guilty of singularity who could force tears to falsely signify his compunction, and Hugh of St. Victor and Peter Lombard, as part of their consideration of penance and reconciliation as a sacrament, suggested that priests could be deceived by a false repentance. Engelhard’s stories bring these problems of discernment to the fore. He continued to reiterate the superior holiness of Cistercian monasticism and the importance of the Cistercian community in shaping its members, but he repeatedly depicted holy abbots and well-meaning communities that could not see the hidden misdeeds of other monks. He described infirmarians who secretly ate meat and supplied food to others, a seemingly holy youth guilty of singularity, and a monastic carpenter who hid

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his sexual desire from his abbot. He portrayed abbots who did not notice the difficult relations within their communities, and whose imposition of penance led to anger or despair rather than a recognition of divine mercy. Rather than presenting monastic priests as skilled doctors, able to investigate and uncover the hidden ills in their community, Engelhard thought that there were times a priest or abbot might fail, unable to knock down a sinner’s defenses and place him or her back on the path toward reformation. Engelhard structured his stories so that his audiences could understand what the abbot or the community could not. His storytelling techniques encouraged his audiences to move beyond a devotional reading in which they embodied the text, instead asking them to place themselves at a distance from the actions within the stories. In many of his tales, the audience could recognize what a protagonist hid in his heart, and they could learn from the story to inspect their own consciences, even without a priest. Such self-reformation depended on performing the emotions the stories elicited. Engelhard thought that the terrifying events in some of his tales should encourage good behavior while examples of divine mercy would prevent despair. His stories demonstrate a God who could balance justice with mercy, and they show people who modeled behaviors on Christ’s loving self-sacrifice, but they also give horrifying examples of what could happen if a person could not temper a self-scrutiny with this imagination of the divine. In offering lessons in a sacramental imagination, his stories taught a faith that prevented despair. Engelhard’s stories appear at the cusp of religious changes that the socioeconomic developments of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries encouraged. Engelhard used and reacted to changes in the use of written texts and to the forms of knowledge that vision offered; he was not alone in exploring new techniques for communication and in considering ways to explore the presence of the divine in the material and visible world. The elaboration of scholastic educational methods and the growth of a self-conscious clerical caste encouraged new relations between the clergy and laity, especially in urban environments where the friars and other priests offered pastoral care and warned against heresy. Yet not all the religious changes of the thirteenth century depended on a hardened dichotomy between clerical and lay. The earliest Franciscans, the beguines, recluses, and, eventually, those men and women who joined the friars’ third orders, were neither priests nor initially part of a “religio,” and they developed ways of understanding their relation to the divine that differed from both the lectio and questio of scholastic theology and the exegesis and contemplative reading of the monastery. Bernard

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McGinn has called their expressions “vernacular theologies.” Rather than viewing theology as the exclusive preserve of those trained in Christian doctrine and logical argumentation, McGinn and others locate discussions about the nature of God and humanity in a variety of genres and practices: certainly, in mystical experiences, but also in saints’ lives, poetry, sermons, and forms of behavior. These theologies are characterized by the expansion of religious writings into vernacular languages, but also by the possibility of shared religious conversations between religious men and women and efforts to find God in the material world and the everyday.13 Engelhard did not write in the vernacular. He composed in Latin for an audience of nuns and monks. Still, Engelhard—and Caesarius of Heisterbach after him—chose to write tales in a simple rhetorical style. In this both authors imitated earlier monastic storytellers who consciously chose to match their rhetoric with the humility of their subjects, but they differed from Cistercians such as Conrad of Eberbach whose language was elaborate and literary.14 By using this simple style, Engelhard and Caesarius made their stories available to audiences with limited Latin—including novices, nuns, and laybrothers—who might have heard their tales rather than reading them. Even more, Engelhard’s desire to find sacramental possibilities in everyday objects and behaviors resembled a thirteenth-century interest in finding the divine in the everyday that began to emerge in multiple genres and forms, including Francis of Assisi’s celebration of the natural world. Engelhard’s stories demonstrate that elements of this new religiosity began to emerge in the late twelfth century and developed in part through an interchange of monastic and scholastic ideas. As an early articulation of a vernacular theology, Engelhard’s collection of exempla for the nuns of Wechterswinkel expresses a new form of religiosity that monks, laybrothers, nuns, and other religious women could share. The Cistercian story collections often seem to mark a transition in genre between the monastic collections of miracle stories that celebrate the holiness of a particular abbey and the friars’ exempla collections that participate in a pastoral dialogue between priests and the laity. Engelhard’s stories depict a shift in religious perspective as well, for his stories combine a scholastic interest in sight and sacrament with a monastic concern for prayer, practice, and discipline in ways that spread his ideas beyond his community of Cistercian men. Engelhard was not anticlerical nor opposed to the sacraments, but rather than advocating a new devotion to the Eucharist, he suggested that labor and prayer could connect the human to the divine in a sacramental fashion and

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that self-inspection and discernment could elicit contrition without the necessity of priestly absolution. His dedication of his stories to nuns, and his description of laybrothers as living alongside the monks rather than in separate spaces, suggests that he, like the later authors of vernacular theologies, expanded his audience beyond a learned elite and assumed the possibility of conversations and shared expressions of spirituality between women and men. Engelhard’s sacramental imagination exists in a space between the fantasy of make-believe and a coercive “making believe.” His awareness of the difficulty of discerning hidden sins and actions parallels a late-twelfth-century reconceptualization of heresy, in which heresy no longer appeared to be beliefs “publicly stated and stubbornly held” but instead seemed a hidden disease that undermined the health of the church from within.15 The combination of penitential practices and judicial inquest that created the medieval process of ecclesiastical inquisition stemmed in part from this fear of what could not be seen. The late-twelfth-century pastoral theologians in Paris also worried about hidden sins and practices; their emphasis on clerical preaching to the laity, which spread as well among thirteenth-century friars, offered religious education as a softer form of coercion. Engelhard’s persuasion was softer still. He recognized the difficult of discerning sins, but he did not use the language of disease to invoke a hidden menace, nor did he depict abbots and priests as authoritative sources of religious education or as channels for divine grace. Instead, he offered stories, collected orally from tales circulated across the Cistercian order, to enhance and reinforce the role of the community and to convince nuns and monks of the holiness of their lives and the mercy of their God. His stories and his story collection were gifts that participated in a mutual exchange of favors rather than lessons from an authoritative teacher who imparted knowledge and advice to his disciples. Nonetheless, while we know that Engelhard’s friend Erbo of Pru¨fening appreciated his tales and that male communities, both Cistercian and otherwise, copied his works, the response of his female audience remains a mystery. Engelhard hoped his composition would help the nuns of Wechterswinkel recognize the sacramental qualities of a Cistercian life, but whether the women accepted and used his gift remains unknown. Engelhard’s stories taught their audiences to imagine connections between heaven and earth. He would not have used the word “religion” to describe this work of imagination; instead he associated these connections with “faith.” His conception of faith, while grounded in the Pauline

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“substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1), nonetheless disrupts the common modern usage that often assumes the equivalence of “faith” and “religion.” It also complicates theological analyses that too easily distinguish medieval conceptions of faith as intellectual and doctrinal from a Protestant experience of faith as affect, and it disrupts the assumptions of contemporary scholars in religious studies, who have abandoned definitions of religion that emphasize belief and faith to focus on lived religions, on material religions, and on religion as a discourse of power. Engelhard’s faith was not doctrinal, nor did it rely solely on an infusion of grace. Rather, Engelhard understood faith as a process of spiritual formation that combined a growth in knowledge with the development of affect and self-discipline through which a nun or a monk gradually learned to recognize objects and behaviors as earthly signs of a heavenly reality. This conception of faith relied on the materiality of Engelhard’s everyday life and was embedded in the practices of his monastic religio. Scholars of religious studies who recognize the specialized character of medieval religio seldom explore its medieval uses and its relation to the more expansive concept of “religion” that emerged in the early modern period.16 My analysis of Engelhard’s efforts to teach monastic faith to the nuns of Wechterswinkel investigates the process by which a monastic religio describing monastic observances began to transform into a broader concept of “religion” that early modern authors employed distinguish their Christian identity from non-Christians. Engelhard’s stories show how the practices of monastic religio formed faith, but they also demonstrate that these techniques of spiritual formation could move outside the confines of a male monastic community to instruct women and nonpriestly men so that they too could follow religio. Engelhard’s ideas anticipated the vernacular Christianities of the later Middle Ages, and they undercut easy distinctions between the elite and the popular. His concept of both fides and religio, however, remained embedded in practice and inseparable from the habitus of monastic life. In illuminating the ways that a monastic teacher preserved elements of his culture in the midst of a rapidly changing society, Engelhard and his stories for nuns and monks demonstrate a fruitful interchange between the fields of religious studies and medieval history, and they show the power of narratives to help us imagine our relationships with ourselves and others.

appendix

Engelhard of Langheim’s Book of Exempla The Manuscripts

There are five complete, or nearly complete, manuscript copies of Engelhard of Langheim’s book of exempla, found in four late twelfth- or thirteenthcentury codices—Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 13097; Zwettl, Stiftsbibliothek Codex 13; Poznan´, Biblioteka Raczyn´skich Rkp. 156; Poznan´, Biblioteka Raczyn´skich, Rkp. 173—and one codex from the fourteenth century—Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale de France, n.a. lat. 2627. All demonstrate their southwest German or Austrian provenance. There are minimal variations in the texts from these manuscripts. Occasionally, words are reversed or omitted, and there are variant spellings. The chapter numbering of stories is not consistent. A lacuna of about 14 lines in Poznan´ 173 omits the end of chapter 18 (“De eo quem demones occiderunt”) and the beginning of chapter 19 (“Ordinis nostri defensio et fratris mali exitus”). Munich BSB Clm 13097 omits a sentence that the Poznan´ and BnF manuscripts include: (“Nulli tamen feminarum similia suaserim, quia multis par fortitudo, sed dispar est fortuna, et eodem belli discrimine sepe cadit fortior, quo vincit infirmior”). It is the variations in the contents of these codices, more than the variants in the texts themselves, that suggest the different ways Engelhard’s texts were preserved and used. Zwettl 13 is the only manuscript that identifies Engelhard by name. The first 208 folios of this codex contain the first three months of the Magnum legendarium austriacum, but its last two quires comprise a new codicological unit that starts with miracles of the Virgin Mary and includes Engelhard’s texts. It contains six letters that Engelhard and Erbo exchanged, five stories

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that Engelhard interwove into his correspondence, and nearly all of Engelhard’s book of exempla. Its last story, the account of brother Joseph, breaks off before the end. Two of the stories that Engelhard embedded in his letters to Erbo are appended to the Poznan´ and BnF recensions of Engelhard’s book for the nuns of Wechterswinkel, but three others appear only in this manuscript. These three stories include the story of the conversion of Simon of Sorø to Cistercian monasticism, a story of a young woman who hired a witch to turn her into a bird so she could see her betrothed before marriage, and a story of a young woman whose demonic pact allowed her to travel through the air. It is possible that the letters and stories in Zwettl 13 were part of a dossier that Engelhard brought to Austria when he became abbot. Munich BSB Clm 13097 originated at the Regensburg abbey of Pru¨fening. Engelhard’s book of exempla is the second codicological unit in a codex that also contains Boto of Pru¨fening’s homilies on Ezekiel. In the correspondence between Engelhard and Erbo, the men discuss a libellus that Engelhard had sent Erbo but then asked him to return. It seems likely that the libellus is an early version of the collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel but that Engelhard added at least two more stories—the accounts of the necromancers and brother Joseph—before he sent the text to the nuns. The date given for Joseph’s death (xii kal Mai ⳱ April 20, 1188) is later than the date of Erbo’s death (January 1188).1 Nonetheless, a copy of Engelhard’s complete collection for the nuns, including his letter of dedication and his writer’s apology, returned to Pru¨fening by the last years of the twelfth century, suggesting the monks at this Hirsau-affiliated community remained interested in Engelhard’s Cistercian stories. The scribe who copied the text began his project by writing sancti spiritus assit nobis gratia in the top margin of folio 133v, and he left a colophon in which he identified himself as Ulrich and asked for prayers for his hard work. He wrote: Scripsit hoc Ulricus nobis opus alme Geori Ottoque confidens vestris precibus aboleri Tot sua peccata libro quota littera scripta Vos pensate suum iusta sub lance laborem Semper ab ingratis dominis quia nullificatur Subdicta plebs quod agit, vos ergo videte patroni Et scribam estram, mercede fovete perenni Vos si quid merita quos scripsimus este favori.

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The two manuscripts from the Raczyn´ski Library in Poznan´ contain nearly complete dossiers of Engelhard’s extant works, as well as copies of texts that Engelhard associated with his compositions. Poznan´ 173 is missing its first and last quires and all indications of its provenance, although it still possesses a binding that may be original. Joseph Schwarzer thought the manuscript originated at Ebrach, but this identification seems to be based on the inclusion of a story from Ebrach rather than any paleographic or codicological evidence.2 Its extant contents, however, are nearly identical to the first codicological unit of Poznan´ 156; thus Poznan´ 156 suggests what might be missing from Poznan´ 173. Poznan´ 156 contains a previously unidentified recension of Engelhard’s texts. A composite manuscript, its first codicological unit consists of a collection of Engelhard’s works. The quires containing Engelhard’s works may have remained unbound for some time, as the outer folios show signs of wear. Eventually, they were bound with a thirteenth-century medical work and a copy of Bernard of Clairvaux’s Steps of Humility and Pride. The codex has an ex libris from the Cistercian abbey of Paradyz, a Polish monastery in the filiation of Morimond that was founded in 1230. However, an earlier ex libris was both scraped off and crossed out, suggesting the manuscript moved to Paradyz well after its production. My attempts to read this erasure using ultraviolet light failed; the abbey’s name has been thoroughly effaced. The contents of this first codicological unit offer a collection of texts written about and dedicated to women. It must have been produced after Engelhard returned to Langheim from Austria, as it includes his vita of Mechthild which he finished after he resigned from his position as abbot, as well as the story the younger Mechthild told about her great aunt. Given its rounded letter forms, it appears to be a slightly earlier manuscript of Engelhard’s works than Poznan´ 173. Many of Engelhard’s compositions in Poznan´ 156 appear in other codices as well. These include Engelhard’s book of exempla, two stories drawn from the correspondence between Engelhard and Erbo, three other monastic stories from a Cistercian milieu, Engelhard’s letter to abbot Herman of Ebrach with its embedded story of a leper, and the vita Mathildis. The vita does not include a deathbed scene in which Mechthild and her father, the count of Andechs, arrange the donation of a tithe to the regular canons at Diessen. This scene does appear in the thirteenth-century manuscript of the vita, Munich BSB Clm 1076, which originated at Diessen, and it seems likely that

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the regular canons composed this passage later to justify their possession of a disputed tithe. Poznan´ 156 also adds previously unknown texts to the corpus of Engelhard’s work. Three tales are unique to this manuscript, although they may originally have appeared in Poznan´ 173 as well. These include a story about the Eucharist, a story about the miraculous oil-producing image of the Virgin at Saydnaya, a Greek convent just to the north of Damascus, and the story told by the nun Mechthild about her great-aunt and the angel who sharpened her pen.3 Also in a complete form in this manuscript is a composition that appears only partially in Poznan´ 173. Joseph Schwarzer had thought the text a life of Christ; it is instead a set of meditations and prayers in honor of the Virgin Mary, with a letter of dedication to a sponsa Christi T. from an author E. The author of this letter uses some of Engelhard’s favorite phrases and Biblical passages, including references to the salt of Elisha (2 Kings 2:20) and the problem of hiding one’s light under a bushel (Matthew 5:15), and the author asks the reader to add to the text if she has corrections, as Engelhard does in his letter to the abbess and nuns of Wechterswinkel. The recipient, “T,” is harder to identify. As a sponsa Christi, she could have been a member of a religious community, a recluse, or a woman who followed an extraregular form of religious life. Although there are no known women in the Andechs family with names that begin with “T,” “Tilde” is a common abbreviation for Mechthild. This is speculative, but it is possible that Engelhard wrote this meditation for the Mechthild who had also provided him with the story of her great-aunt. Finally, this first codicological unit contains works that assisted the author as he wrote his prayers to the Virgin Mary. E. mentions in his letter to “T” that he based his prayers on the “evangelio” and that he nearly made a mistake about the Assumption of the Virgin. Following the devotional texts is a portion of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, Gerhoh of Reichersberg’s letter to religious women on the Assumption, and a treatise by John of Arezzo. This unit ends with three verses: one on the Trinity, one on the Virgin, and finally an acrostic poem about the servant at Ebrach in which forms Engelhard’s name. The fourteenth-century codex now in the Bibliothe`que nationale de Paris (n.a. lat. 2627) originated in southern Germany. The majority of this manuscript contains excerpts from the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux organized by topic, with each section marked by little parchment tags for ready reference. The last 80 folios are labeled “miracula s. Bernhardi ordinis cysterciensis”; this section begins with a table enumerating the 185 stories that

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follow. Many of these are tales from Herbert of Clairvaux’s Liber miraculorum, but the last twenty-eight are Engelhard’s stories, prefaced with his letter of dedication to the abbess of Wechterswinkel. The table of contents lists not only the stories from Engelhard’s book of exempla but also most of the other stories found in the Poznan´ manuscripts; the scribe, however, did not finish the task, as the last stories listed in the table of contents are missing from the manuscript itself, including the last two stories of the exempla book. The appearance of Engelhard’s stories in this collection suggests that they continued to be used in a southern German Cistercian context for at least a century after Engelhard’s death.

Manuscript Descriptions and Content Zwettl, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex 13 Date: late twelfth to early thirteenth century (see Liebers, Griesser, Ziegler) Provenance: Zwettl Contents: I. a. fol. 1r–1v Fragmentum ex graduale b. fol. 2v Epistola Chromatii et Heliodori et S. Hieronymum c. fols. 3r–207b Magnum legendarium austriacum [Heiligenkreuz, MS 11] (January–March) d. fol. 207v Tractatus de fluvio Oronte e. fol. 207v–208r De nequitia haeretici f. fol. 208r De altercatione haeretici presbyteri cum diacono g. fol. 208r De ecclesia Agathensi h. fol. 208v Versus Anselmi cur homo deus II. a. fol. 209r–221r Miraculi Sancte Mariae [Heiligenkreuz, MS 11, fols. 246v–262v] b. fol. 221r–221v De conversatione S. Mariae Magdalenae c. fol. 222v–223r Adam et Eva quando expulsi sunt [incomplete] d. fol. 223r Epistola abbatis Erbonis ad Engelhardum monachum: Angelo domini sabaoth domino E e. fol. 223r Responsio apollogetica Engelhardi monachi: Domino suo Erboni venerabili semel in terra

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f.

fol. 223r

Item erbo abbas ad Engelhardum: Amicorum illustrissimo Engelhardo crisostomo g. fol. 223r Rescriptum ad quem supra h. fol. 223v Domino suo et dignanter amico Erboni suus E: In dubium veni et quid eligam ignoro Rem aggredior dicere dictam michi i. fols. 223v–225v Historia predulcis de filio cuiusdam comitis qui recens uxorem acceperat (story included in the preceding letter) j. fol. 226r–v Jungam huic quiddam actu dissimile [De peregrino qui de nostris partibus Jerosolimam ivit] k. fol. 226v Erboni dei servo indeque domino suo l. fols. 226v–227r In persona res gesta est et eminenti et omnibus nota m. fol. 227r Addam cumulum mali referre adhuc unum brevius isto n. fol. 227r–v Instanter agitis, ut scribantur, que mirabiliter evenerunt [Legend of the abbot Simon of Sorø] o. fols. 228r–234v Domine et matri M. venerabili atque amabili in Christo abbatisse in Wechterswinchel [Engelhard’s book of exempla follows; the last story, De fratre Joseph, is incomplete] III. a. fol. 234v Qualiter Zwetlensis civitas a nobis per violentiam abstracta est. Notes on paleography: The Miracles of the Virgin start a new codicological unit that has two columns and fifty-one lines, in comparison with the MLA, which has two columns and fifty-two lines. Both are written in a protogothic book hand, but the scribes in this second unit produce more upright and rounder letters than the scribes for the MLA. Their letters are slightly more angular than Munich BSB Clm 13907. M’s and n’s tend to be rounded; d’s are usually but not always upright; the arms of h’s taper below the riser. The scribes dot double i’s but do not use hyphens for word breaks. They use the Trionian et. They do not note diphthongs. They use a punctus rather than a punctus flexus. There are spaces left for rubrics that were not added. Also, the rubricator did not always fill the space left for initials and at least twice wrote in the wrong letter (fol. 228vb and fol. 229rb).

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Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 13097 [Rat. civ. 97] Date: late twelfth century (see Liebers, Klemm) Provenance: Pru¨fening, Staatsliche Bibliothek Regensburg Contents: I. a. fols. 1r–125r Botonis monachi Pruviningensis homiliae in Ezechielem b. fol. 125v–127r Sermo de annuntiatione c. fol. 127v–132v De logo II. a. fol. 133r Blank b. fols. 133v–167r Anonymi Cisterciensis tractatus de miraculis sacramenti altaris. Scripsit Ulricus Pruviningensis [Engelhard’s book of exempla] c. fol. 167v Colophon Notes on paleography: Engelhard’s book of exempla is the second codicological unit in this codex. It begins on a new quire, with a new hand and different initials; there appears to be just one scribe for this text, and he ended his work with a colophon. The text is a rounded protogothic with the spatulate risers characteristic of southern German and Austrian hands. The letter d is at times upright and at times has its riser raked back; upright s’s have small tails, if any. The arms of h’s seldom end below the ruling. Only double i’s are dotted. Occasionally the scribe uses a cedilla for diphthongs. The scribe does not use hyphens at word breaks and uses a punctus for a pause rather than the Cistercian punctus flexus found in the Poznan´ manuscripts. The scribe employs the Tironian et rather than the ampersand.

Poznan´, Raczynskische Bibliotheka, Rkp. 156 Date: thirteenth century, probably earlier than Poznan´ 173 (my dating). Provenance: Paradyz (founded 1230/6), an earlier ex libris is effaced. Contents: I. a. fol. 1r Ex libris and Ave virgo stella Maria b. fol. 1v De corpore domini c. fols. 2r–3r Sponse christi T., E. suus se et sua d. fols. 3r–36v De titulo qui sit [beginning of prayers in praise of Mary]

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e. fol. 27r–v f.

fols. 27v–35r

g. fol. 35r h. fols. 35r–37r

i.

fols. 37r–48v

j. fols. 48v–49r k. fols. 49r–78r

l.

fols. 78r–95r: 1. fol. 78r–v 2. fols. 78v–87v 3. fol. 88r–v 4. fols. 88v–90r

5. fols. 90r–92v 6. fols. 92v–93v 7. fols. 93v–95r m. fol. 95r n. fols. 95r–96r

o. fols. 96r–97v p. fol. 97v q. fols. 97v–98r r. fols. 98r–116v

Cromatius et Helidorus episcopis ad Ieronium presbyterum Rescriptum Ieronium presbyteri Cromatio et Heliodoro episcopis [includes the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, but without a rubric] Verse Incipit praefatio sequentis operis [Letter from Gerhoh of Reichersberg to sisters in Christ; see Admont, Stiftsbibliothek 579, fols. 35r–52v, and Gerhoh, Opera. 1.366–76] Assumpto sanctissime dei genitricis Marie [includes John of Arezzo’s treatise] Verse Incipiunt miracula [Engelhard’s book of exempla, including letter of dedication and his writer’s apology] [Additional stories] Proemium sequentis narrationis. Rem aggredior Qualiter episcopus susceptus et edoctus haec hystoriam Apollogetium scriptoris et quod hystoria haec contempni non debeat ne contentione defende De peregrino qui de nostris partibus ierosolimam ivit De quodam monacho de campo De Waltero monacho De quodam servulo capto in curia eberacensium Acrostic poem Epistola. Domino et patri clarissimo Hermanno abbati de ebera. E. pauper suus et modicus modicum De leproso per ignem mundato Epistola. Domine illustri comitisse N., E. dictus abbas orationes peccoris Capitula Incipit vita sancte Mechtildis

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s. fols. 116v–117r

207

Epystola. Domino praeposito et fratribus universis in Dyza E. pauper et modicus non modice in domino valere. t. fol. 117r Hymnis de sancta Mechtildis u. fol. 117r–v De eo quod angelis ei pennam temperavit v. fols. 117rv–119r De imagine sancte Marie virginis w. fols. 119v–120r Poems x. fol. 120v unlined O lilium convallum flos II. a. fols. 121–123r Versus urinarum secundum egidium [Giles de Corbeil, fl. 1200] b. fols. 123v–125v Liber aforismorum Jo. Damascenis c. fols. 125v–132r Albertus de Zachariis d. fols. 133–137 Expliciunt versus cordis ab egidio de pulsibus [Anatomical treatise] e. fols. 138–161 Tractatus de duodecim gradibus humilitatis [Bernard of Clairvaux] f. fols. 161–162 Epistola ad lugdunensesis canonicos de conceptione marie viriginis gloriose Notes on paleography: The script is rounder than the letters in Poznan´ 173, especially the m’s and n’s, suggesting an earlier date. There is no consistency with d’s, which sometimes change form mid-word. The s’s end on the ruling. The scribes use hyphens to break words. There seem to be multiple scribes; most use a cedilla for diphthongs, although some do not. Some dot double i’s, others do not. Some use an ampersand, others the Tironian et. The text is highly punctuated, including the Cistercian punctus flexus. There are occasional accent marks in the text. The parchment is carefully stitched together in multiple places. The color and size of the parchment shifts between the first and second codicological units, suggesting that these units were bound together later. Poznan´, Raczynskische Bibliotheka Rkp. 173 Date: thirteenth century (see Schwarzer, Liebers) Provenance: unknown (Griesser and Schwarzer proposed Ebrach) Contents: Missing first quire a. starts midsentence First rubric: Colloquium Christi et Marie b. fol. 27v–30r Incipit praefatio sequentis operis frater Gerhohus praepositus

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c. fol. 30r-41v d. fol. 41v e. fols. 42r–97v

f.

fols. 80r –100v 1 fol. 80r 2. fols. 80r–91v 3. fol. 91v

4. fols. 91v–94v 5. fols. 94v–97v 6. fols. 97v–99r 7. fols. 99r–100v g. fols. 101r–101v h. fols. 101v–102v

i. j.

fols. 102v–104v fols. 104v–105r

k. fols. 105r–

Assumpto sanctissime dei genitricis Marie Poem Incipiunt miracula [Engelhard’s book of exempla with letter of dedication and his writer’s apology] [Additional stories] Proemium sequentis narrationis: Rem aggredior Qualiter episcopus susceptus et edoctus haec hystoriam Apollogeticum scriptoris quod hystoria his non contempni debeat ne contentione defende De peregrino qui nostri partibus ieriosolimi ivit De quodam monacho de campo De Walter monacho De quodam servulo capto in curia eberacensium Glossed poems Epistola. Domino et patri carissimo Hermanno, abbati de Ebera, E. pauper suus et modicus modicum De leproso per ignem mundato Epistola. Domine illustri comitisse N., E. dictus abbas orationes peccatoris Vita sanctae Mechtildis [chapter headings complete, but the text breaks off at Chapter 10]

Missing last quire Notes on paleography: The codex is missing the first and last quire, although the binding may be original. It is written in a protogothic book hand with angular characteristics, both in rounded letters (c, o), and in m’s and n’s. The script is consistent, suggesting a single scribe. The arms of the h’s extend below the riser; d’s vary between upright and raked back, with no consistent pattern. Upright s’s sometimes have a tail but usually end on the ruling. The scribe uses hyphens to break words at the margin and uses multiple punctuation forms, including the punctus flexus. There is no marking of diphthongs.

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Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale de France, n.a. lat. 2627 Date: fourteenth century Provenance: a southern German or Austrian Cistercian abbey; afterward Regensburg (collection Ratisbonne de Ravenel) Contents: a. fols. 1r–42r Gerardus Leodiensis, De doctrina cordis b. fols. 42v–58v S. Maximus confessor, Liber Hecatontadum IV de caritate ad Elpidium, Cerbao interprete; Epistola translatoris; epistola s. Maximi c. fols. 59r–149r Guillelmus Tornacensis. Bernardinum prologue, incipit liber primus exceptionum collectarum de diversis opusculis b. Bernhardi editus ab episcopo Petro Senonensi [excerpts from Bernard’s works] d. fols. 149v–158r Florigerus s. Augustini e. fols. 158v–242 Miracula s. Bernhardi ordinis cysterciesis [Herbert LM] 1. Contents list 185 chapters, fols. 158v–160; text contains 174 chapters 2. fols. 228v–229r Prologue to abbess of Wechterswinkel 3. fols. 229r–240v Engelhard’s book of exempla [ends with De Petro clarevallis; the story of brother Joseph appears only in the table of contents]

notes

introduction 1. “Altaris sacri sacramenta sunt hec in quibus aliud cernimus atque aliud credimus. Aliud videtur et aliud est, panis de terra terrenus apparens sed de celo celestis existens.” EB c. 1, fol. 49v. Engelhard’s book of exempla was edited in an unpublished dissertation by Oppel, Die Exemplarischen Mirakel des Engelhard von Langheim, and partially edited by Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und sein Exempelbuch,” 55–73. It exists in four thirteenth-century manuscripts and one fourteenth-century manuscript (see Appendix). I use Poznan´ Rkp. 156 as my base text; this manuscript was unknown to Oppel and Griesser. For a list of Engelhard’s stories, see Figure 1. 2. “Plurima sunt eiusmodi,” he insisted. EB c. 1, fol. 50r. 3. “Femina fuit hic homo; nemo cognovit.” Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 516. 4. See Appendix. 5. For scholarship on these collections, see Mula, “Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Cistercian Exempla Collections,” 903–12, and the collection of McGuire’s essays in Friendship and Faith. 6. Erbo, the second abbot of that name, served as abbot of Pru¨fening between 1168 and his resignation in 1187. He died January 20, 1188. See Worstbrock, “Erbo II von Pru¨fening,” 2.573–74. His dates help constrain the date of Engelhard’s collection. See Appendix. 7. For scholars who consider Wechterswinkel the oldest community of Cistercian nuns east of the Rhine, see Schlotheuber, “Die Zisterzienerinnengemeinschaften im Spa¨tmittelalter,” 269, and Felten, “Zisterzienserinnen in Deutschland, 359. See also Chapter 1 for challenges to this position. 8. A number of twelfth-century Cistercian monks, including Bernard of Clairvaux and Aelred of Rievaulx, wrote to religious women, but they did not address women who followed Cistercian practices. Adam of Perseigne wrote his Liber de mutuo amore for Agnes of Fontevrault in the last years of the twelfth century, and he eventually helped Agnes become abbess of the Cistercian nuns at Clairets, but Agnes did not become a Cistercian until 1213. Trussler, “ ‘The Book of Mutual Love’ of Adam of Perseigne,” 47–48. Goswin of Boulancourt wrote lives of Emmeline and Asceline, both from Boulancourt, in the early years of the thirteenth century, and a Cistercian from Les Echarlis wrote the life of Alpaix of Cudot before 1211. See McGuire, “The Cistercians and Friendship,” 171–200. 9. Mark 4:21; Matthew 5:15. EB c. 6, fol. 51v; c. 28, fol. 70v; c. 32, fol. 73r; Letter 2, in Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 25, and VM c. 8, p. 438.

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10. A few stories from Engelhard’s collection for the nuns of Wechterswinkel were edited by Schwarzer in 1881, more of the collection was edited by Griesser in 1963, and Oppel edited the entire collection in his unpublished dissertation in 1976. Brian Patrick McGuire discussed and edited a few more of Engelhard’s stories in “Rebirth and Responsibility” in 1988, and Jonathan Lyon translated the life of Mechthild of Diessen in Noble Society, 163–219. Only Lyon has noticed Engelhard’s interest in religious women. 11. See below and Chapter 4. 12. For a medievalist who has joined this conversation within religious studies, see Ames, “Medieval Religious, Religions, Religion,” 334–52. 13. Rubin, Corpus Christi, 51; Vauchez, “Pre´sentation,” in Faire croire, 7–16; Stock, Implications of Literacy, 27. For the scholastic disctinction between implicit (or infused) faith and explicit faith, see Van Engen, “Faith as a Concept of Order,” 36–47. 14. The dichotomies embedded in the idea of popular religion have remained remarkably resistant. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 12–22, provides a critique of the two-tiered model that he traces back to David Hume. See also Van Engen, “The Christian Middle Ages as a Historiographical Problem,” 519–52, and Ames, “Authentic, True, and Right,” 87–110. 15. Leclercq, Love of Learning, 192, coined the term “monastic theology.” New “vernacular theologies” include mystical theologies, pastoral theologies, narrative theologies, imaginative theologies, and “theologizing in a hagiographic mode.” See McGinn, “Meister Eckhart and the Beguines in the Context of Vernacular Theology,” 4–14, and “The Changing Shape of Medieval Mysticism,” 205–10; McGinn acknowledges his debt to Leclercq. See also Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England,” 823–24; Corbari, Vernacular Theology; B. Newman, God and the Goddesses, 294–304; Smirnova, “Narrative Theology in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum,” 121–23; and Smith, Excessive Saints, 17. Given the expansiveness of McGinn’s characterization of vernacular theologies, I consider most of these other theologies to be subsets of McGinn’s category. Watson places more emphasis on vernacular languages and the transmission of Christian knowledge to a lay audience than do many of these other scholars. 16. Since the field of religious studies avoids the normative investigations into the nature of divinities and supernatural phenomenon that are characteristic of “theologies,” scholars of religion are often leery of the term “theology.” As a medieval historian, I study theologies but do not practice theology, and I combine my interest in the expression of theological ideas with the theories emphasizing practice and materiality that are prevelent in religious studies. 17. See, for instance, G. G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, who uses “popular” stories to create a picture of medieval and Catholic superstition and credulity that modern scholars still seek to counteract. See Christianson, “G. G. Coulton: The Medievalist as Controversialist,” 421–41. More recently, scholars have become interested in a dialogic voice mediating between clerical and lay. See Gurevich, Medieval Popular Culture, xx, 33–38; Le Goff, “Introduction,” in Berlioz and Polo de Beaulieu, eds., Les exempla me´die´vaux, 17; and the essays in Polo de Beaulieu, Collomb, and Berlioz, eds., Le tonnerre des exemples. 18. Beach, Women as Scribes, 128–34; Griffiths, Garden of Delights, esp. 164–78; B. Newman, “Liminalities,” 354–402. 19. See McNamara, “The Herrenfrage,” 3–29, and B. Newman, “Liminalities,” 354–402. 20. Scholarly approaches to this division vary. Some see it primarily as antagonistic: see McNamara, Sisters in Arms, 5, and Elliott, Proving Women, 297–303; and some see it more as symbiotic: see Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power, 211–28; Miller, Beguines of Medieval Paris, 81–125; and Griffiths and Hotchin, Partners in Spirit, 22–28. Griffiths, in Nuns’ Priests’

Notes to Pages 7–9

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Tales, esp. 14–26, argues that nuns’ priests found spiritual value in their care of religious women; and Mews, in “Negotiating the Boundaries of Gender in Religious Life,” 113–48, argues that the boundaries between nuns and monk hardened after the Second Lateran Council in 1139. 21. Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 141–70, 191–234. 22. McNamer, Affective Meditation, 84–85; Astell, Eating Beauty, 62–98; and Engh, Gendered Identities, esp. 325–42. 23. Stock, Implications of Literacy, 451–54; Anciaux, La the´ologie du sacrement de pe´nitence, 586–600. 24. Mahn, L’ordre cistercien et son gouvernement, 197–216. 25. Roisin, “L’efflorescence cistercienne et le courant fe´minin de pie´te´,” 342–78; McGuire, “The Cistercians and the Transformation of Monastic Friendships,” 1–63. See also Jacques de Vitry’s praise of the Cistercians in his Historia Occidentalis, c. 14–15. 26. Sternberg, Cistercian Architecture and Medieval Society, esp. 241–43; Noell, “Scholarship and Activism at Cıˆteaux in the Age of Innocent III,” 21–53; Obert-Piketty, “Benoıˆt XII et les colle`ges cisterciens du Languedoc,” 139–50. 27. Kienzle, Cistercians, Heresy and Crusade, 109–73. 28. See especially EM 1.10, 6.10, and the criticisms of Walter Map, De nugis curialium, 1.25. 29. For pedagogical changes that shift from personal example to mimetic texts, Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 190. 30. Much recent scholarship on female religiosity has sought to illuminate the possibilities open to religious women, complicating and even overturning narratives of male suspicion and female oppression. Foundational are Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages; Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption; and B. Newman, Sister of Wisdom. See also Venarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society; Berman, White Nuns; Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns; Beach, Women as Scribes and Trauma of Monastic Reform; Griffiths, Garden of Delights and Nuns’ Priests’ Tales; Griffiths and Hotchin, eds., Partners in Spirit, and the essays in Mews, ed., Listen, Daughter. 31. It is an axiom of women’s history that the cultural construction of gender shapes women’s opportunities and experiences, but the more recent recognition that gendered language illuminates power in myriad ways has disrupted a binary sex-gender system. Scott, in “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” 1053–75, and Rubin, in “Traffic in Women,” 157–210, moved the discussion toward gender and power, and Butler, in Gender Trouble, added an emphasis on the performativity of gender that started to break down gender binaries. See now Lochrie, Hetrosyncrasies, 1–26, and Hollywood, “The Normal, the Queer, and the Middle Ages,” in Acute Melancholia, 163–70. See also McDaniel, The Third Gender and Aelfric’s “Lives of Saints,” xlv–xix. 32. “Nichil horum scribo que legerim vel scripta comperim, sed quedam que visu, plurima que auditu didicerim.” EB, dedication, fol. 49r. For the Cistercians as a textual community, see Stock, Implications of Literacy, 329. For their early attitude toward texts and the charismatic authority they embodied, see M. Newman, “Text and Authority,” 173–98. 33. See Hahn, “Visio Dei,” 169–96. For further bibliography, see Chapter 3. 34. Stock, Implications of Literacy, 252–315; Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, 117. 35. Tachau, “Seeing as Action and Passion,” 336–59, and Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 111–28. 36. Coulter, Per Visibilia ad Invisibilia, 61–63.

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37. “Apud nos non defuerunt ista quibus horum dubitatione temptatis per visum ostensa, quibusdam etiam vigilantibus atque inspectantibus ea specie qua creduntur exhibita.” EB c. 1, fol. 50r. 38. Kramer, Sin, Interiority, and Selfhood, 50–54; for a theological overview, Osborne, Reconciliation and Justification, 102–11. 39. Elliott, Proving Women, 19–21. See now Forrest, Trustworthy Men, 25–32. In linking theological, emotional, and sociopolitical conceptions of faith, Forrest considers the relation between having faith in God and trusting other people. 40. “Sagena illa ewangelica missa in mare ex omni genere piscium congregat ad fidem, et in illa queque religio capturas suas agit et trahit ad conversationem.” EB c. 19, fol. 63v. 41. “Puram atque securam efficit conscientiam religionis nostre custodia quam clericalis observantia.” EB c. 23, fol. 68v. 42. Ames, “Medieval Religious, Religions, Religion,” 335; Asad, “On Discipline and Humility,” 166–67. 43. “Si signa queras invenies ibi, quamquam ne illa multum curent pro eo quod scriptum est. Signa non fidelibus sed infidelibus data sunt, id potius et ex toto affectantes quod signa significant plenitudinem fidei, vite sanctitatem.” EB c. 28, fol. 70r. 44. Van Engen, “Faith as a Concept of Order,” 26–28. Baptism impressed on the child’s soul a mark of faith (a “character”) that distinguished faithful from infidel; it gave the child a disposition or habitus with which to grown in virtue. 45. The critique is also that of Justice, “Did the Middle Ages Believe in Their Miracles?,” 1–3. But he does not seek to explore medieval conceptions of the terms. Medievalists have used the term “faith” in multiple ways—at times as a substitute for the term “religion,” at times to contrast with expressions of doubt, skepticism, or rationality, at times to mean belief in doctrine—but they seldom consider what medieval thinkers themselves tell us about their own definitions of faith and religion. For scholars who do, see Van Engen and Ames, cited above; Bell, “Certitudo Fidei,” 249–75; Colish, “Faith in Peter Lombard’s Collectanea,” 39–52; Mews, “Abelard and His Contemporaries on Faith,” 137–50; and Forrest, Trustworthy Men, 15–32, 66–76. 46. Smith, “Religion, Religions, Religious,” 269–84; Fitzgerald, Ideology of Religious Studies; Masuzawa, Invention of World Religions; Chidester, Savage Systems. 47. For instance, Chidester proclaimed that “belief, experience, inner states, and spirituality are out” in “Material Terms of the Study of Religion,” 374. See also Lopez, “Belief,” 21–35. 48. Van Engen, “Faith as a Concept of Order,” 19–67. 49. Schmitt, Ghosts, 7–10. For more recent discussion of believing as a social act, see Van Engen, “Introduction,” 19–21. See also de Certeau, “Ways of Believing,” in Practice of Everyday Life, 177–89. 50. Justice, “Did the Middle Ages Believe in Their Miracles?,” 1–29, and “Eucharistic Miracle and Eucharistic Doubt,” 307–32. 51. For other studies that use exempla to explore issues of faith and doubt, see Brewer, Wonder and Skepticism, 105–36, and Easting and Sharpe’s study of Peter of Cornwall’s Liber Revelationem in Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, 51–59. 52. See the essays in Berliner and Sarro´, eds., Learning Religion; Luhrmann, Nusbaum, and Thisted, “The Absorption Hypothesis,” 766–78; Luhrmann, “A Hyperreal God and Modern Belief,” 371–95; Mittermaier, Dreams that Matter, 2–4, 13–20; and Keane, “On Semiotic Ideology,” 64–87, and “Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things,” 409–25. Keane

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argues that semiotic systems, with their fundamental assumptions about the nature and function of signs, the agents who can interpret them, and the role of intentions in their signification, create the lines that distinguish human subjectivity from inanimate material. 53. Berliner and Sarro´, “On Learning Religion,” in Learning Religion, 11. 54. See Severi, “Learning to Believe,” 21–30; Lambek, “On Catching Up with Oneself,” 65–80; and Luhrmann, “How Do You Learn to Know That It Is God Who Speaks?,” 81–102. 55. It is no accident that anthropological approaches that consider faith as a process of skilled learning have an affinity to medieval ideas about faith, for some of the most influential theorists on the importance of practice, including Talal Asad, Michel de Certeau, and Pierre Bourdieu, were interested in aspects of medieval European religious culture. See especially Asad’s “On Discipline and Humility,” 125–70, and Holsinger, Premodern Condition, 94–103. 56. Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, 1–54. For further works, see Chapter 2. 57. See Stockwell, “The Positioned Reader,” 263–77; Stockwell, Cognitive Poetics, 105–21; Herman, “Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness,” 245–59; Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, esp. 39–59. See also McNamer’s discussion of a “horizon of expectations” that influence an author’s choices, Affective Meditation, 61. 58. For works on learning empathy and the mimetic possibilities of scripts, McNamer, Affective Meditation, 11–14; Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 275–77. See also Morrison’s discussion of Gerhoh of Reichersberg in “I Am You,” 196–237. 59. See the collection of essays in Faire croire, and Tentler, “Seventeen Authors in Search of Two Religious Cultures,” 248–57. See as well “Introduction,” in Smirnova, ed., Art of Cistercian Persuasion, 4–6, that suggests the analysis of faire croire is reemerging as a research topic. 60. Carruthers, Book of Memory, 1–4, avoids the use of imagination for this reason. For medieval conceptions of the term, see Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 1–4. See also Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity, 3, 71–73, and Mittermaier, Dreams that Matter, 3, 16–20 for an “anthropology of the imagination.” For a different use of the term “imagination,” see Le Goff, Medieval Imagination, 2–17, and for a modern philosophical consideration of imagination, see C. McGinn, Mindsight, 48–55. 61. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, 3, 23–26. 62. Palme´n, Richard of St. Victor’s Theory of Imagination, 39–49. 63. See Robbins, “What Is the Matter with Transcendence?,” 772–73, where he draws on Alfred Schutz in distinguishing between “little,” “medium,” and “great” transcendences that correspond roughly to object impermanence, theories of mind, and abstract thought (including “religion”). But see also Lambek’s critique, 783. 64. Engh, Gendered Identities, esp. 154–55, for a discussion of nuptial and maternal imagery. 65. McGinn, “The Changing Shape of Medieval Mysticism,” 198–201.

chapter 1 1. EB fols. 94r–95r, 120r. The servant from the Cistercian monastery of Ebrach had been held for ransom in a nearby castle during the period of political chaos following the death of Emperor Henry VI in 1197. Caesarius of Heisterbach also used an acrostic to present himself as author. See “Introduction,” in Smirnova, ed., Art of Cistercian Persuasion, 7. 2. For the use of initials in letters, see Beach, “Voices from a Distant Land,” 39.

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3. See Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 523, who starts with the attribution of the Vita Mathildis to Engelhard. The letters and their rubrics in Zwettl 13 spell out the names of the correspondents. This makes Engelhard’s authorship explicit. See Appendix. 4. For scholarship on monasticism that considers borders and peripheries, see the essays in Jamroziak and Sto¨ber, eds., Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe, and Jamroziak, Survival and Success on Medieval Borders, 197–201. Jamroziak stresses the importance of close relations with patrons for the survival of monasteries along borders. 5. For a recent exploration of ideas of spiritual equality among twelfth-century German monks and nuns, see Beach, Trauma of Monastic Reform, 73–90. 6. For other efforts to establish Engelhard’s dates that come to similar conclusions, see Oppel, “Engelhard von Langheim,” 550–54, and Personennamen des Mittelalters, 171. 7. “Siquidem affectum pro beneficio debeo illi qui post obitum patris pater orphanorum factus est michi, fovens et enutriens me in omni genere beneficii.” EB c. 22, fol. 67r; also c. 23, fol. 68v. 8. Zink, St. Theodor, nos. 4, 5, pp. 272–76, and Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und sein Exempelbuch,” 66, n. 12. 9. This was Bertolf; see below. 10. “Quia sum indoctus, doctis me non comparo.” EB c. 11, fol. 56v. “Ego rusticandi studiosus.” VM, 437. 11. Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 62, and Fried, “Die Bamberger Domschule,” 166–70. When Berthold of Andechs, the provost of Bamberg’s cathedral, was elected archbishop of Kalocza in 1206, a papal commission appointed to examine his suitability for high office found that while Berthold could read and translate Latin and understood Latin grammar, he had no knowledge of canon law or theology. He thus spent several years studying law at Vicenza before his consecration as archbishop. See Pixton, The German Episcopacy, 206–7. 12. “Ceterum filios ordinis ipse nutrivit, quorum unus Bertolfus in se nutritoris expressit ymaginem cui tamen illa non sufficere visa est ad perfectionem.” EB c. 23, fol. 68r. In the correspondence between Erbo and Engelhard, Erbo quotes Vergil and makes reference to Boethius, while Engelhard makes a reference to the Medes and the Persians. He later refers to Volmar as “another Homer.” EB c. 22, fol. 67r. 13. VM, 437; EB c. 11, fol. 56v; c. 17, fol. 62v. 14. “Bonus erat ingenio et studiosus in discendo, ita ut metricus quidam quorum tunc copia babenbergensis scola gaudebat, diceret non tam poeta quam propheta de puero.” EB c. 22, fol. 67r. 15. “Non me inquit decipies, ego quid marca sit nescio, quid libra non intelligo.Tu si habere vis equum in hanc manum meam nummos triginta pone, et in alteram totidem. Hoc nisi tu feceris, equum meum non habebis.” EB c. 22, fol. 67v. 16. “Nam primis adolescentie annis cum me multiplex aggrederetur inimicus, et iamiamque triumpharet, fugam meditanti otto sanctus occurrit, nutantem erexit, correxit errantem rursumque fortiorem et meliorem de verbo remisit ad pugnam.” EB c. 25, fol. 69r. 17. “Nam ego negotia domus tunc curavi.” EB c. 5, fol. 51r. 18. EB c. 5, fols. 50v–51r; c. 19, fols. 63r–64v. 19. EB c. 11, fols. 55v–56v; c. 25, fols. 69r–70r; c. 5, fols. 50v–51r; “De quodam servulo,” fols. 93v–95r; “De peregrino,” fols. 88v–90r; and Letter 4, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68:29. 20. See the stories about Gotschalk, especially EB c. 7, fol. 52r–v, in which he sees both laybrothers and monks as kings before God. See Chapter 4.

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21. Eleven of the thirty-one stories that have specific locations are at Langheim. Another five Engelhard heard at Langheim, brought to him by other monks. This contrasts with the wide-ranging urban contacts that Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogue on Miracles displays. 22. He claimed he heard Simon of Sorø’s account of his own death and resurrection from the dead. Simon was abbot of the Danish Cistercian monastery of Sorø between 1164 and 1188. Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 33, 76: 20–22. 23. For Bezelin, see EB c. 14–17, fols. 58v–62v; for Chuno see c. 18, fols. 62v–63r; for the abbot of Morimond, see c. 33, fols. 73r–74v. 24. “Dilexi uos eitiam pirusquam uiderem,” Letter 2, Bruno Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 25. 25. Sheffler, Schools and Schooling, 27. 26. Letters 1–3, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 25–26. 27. See Appendix. 28. “In Austria, cum abbas vocarer,” in Schwarzer, “Vitae et Miracula,” 524. Similarly, in the copy of his letter dedicating his vita of Mechthild of Diessen, found in Poznan´ 156, fol. 97v, he refers to himself as “dictus abbas.” In the edition of the same letter in the Acta Sanctorum, probably based on Diessen’s copy of the letter (Munich BSB Clm 1076) he elaborates, describing himself as “brother E, once called abbot, now however one of the poor of Christ in Langheim.” VM, 437. 29. Watzl, “Engelhard von Langheim,” 1–19, surmises that Engelhard was in Austria caring for the nuns of St. Nikolas in Vienna and then became abbot of Heiligenkreuz. 30. “Abbas qui creatus est ad abbatem Sanctae Crucis in Austria contra formam et instituta ordinis deponitur in instanti.” Statuta II, 1206, no. 14, p. 73. 31. Leclercq, “Aspects de la vie cistercienne,” 223–26; Lucet, ed., La codification cistercienne, 1–9; Mahn, L’ordre cistercien et son gouvernement, 208–16. 32. Watzl, “Engelhard von Langheim,” 292. 33. For this codex, see Appendix and see Ziegler, Zisterzienserstift Zwettl, I, 31–37. 34. A fragment of Engelhard’s story of brother Joseph was copied into Heiligenkreuz 177, dated to the thirteenth century, suggesting that the monks there had access to at least some of Engelhard’s compositions. ´ Riain, “Magnum Legendar35. For a discussion of recent scholarship on the MLA, see O ium Austriacum,” 87–165. ´ Riain, “Magnum Legendarium Austriacum,” 158–60. 36. O 37. Watzl, “Engelhard von Langheim,” 16. Other candidates for the initial production of the MLA were Heiligenkreuz and Pru¨fening. 38. Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 16; Beach, “Voices from a Distant Land,” 42. See Figure 5. 39. See, for instance, Arnold of Pru¨fening’s Dialogus de miraculis sancte Marie (BHL 5360), in Admont Stiftsbibliothek, codex 180, as well as in the Zwettl and Heiligenkreuz manu´ Riain, “Magnum Legendarium Austriacum,” 156; Oppel, “Arnold von scripts of the MLA; O Pru¨fening,” 1.479–83. 40. “In Austria, cum abbas vocarer, rogatus sum scribere vitam sancte Metthildis abbatisse, quam inchoans ibi, hic Domino adjuvante consummavi;” Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 524. 41. Bernold was abbot of Sticˇna from 1181 to 1221. Mlinaricˇ, Stisˇka opatija, 881–82. 42. “Nam cum regem et judicem populus non haberat”; “De quodam servulo,” in Poznan´ 156, fol. 93v.

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43. For the settlement of eastern Franconia, see Herrmann, “Zur mittelalterlichen Siedlungsgeschichte Oberfrankens,” 1–21. 44. For a history of this pilgrimage site, and the complex negotiations over the building of the new eighteenth-century basilica, see Lehmann, “Balthasar Neumann und Kloster Langheim,” 213–42. 45. Hotz, Zisterzienserklo¨ster in Oberfranken, 45, 53–64. 46. Geldner, Langheim, 19, 60. Langheim shared the salt mine with Ebrach and shared the Bamberg house with both Ebrach and Heilsbonn. See Bamberg, Staatsarchiv Kloster Langheim Urkunden 1152 II 2 and 1154 VI, in monasterium.net, accessed at 2017–09–10Z. 47. Geldner, Langheim, 36, 41–42, 50–51, 193. 48. Lyon, Princely Brothers and Sisters, 154–63. 49. Lyon, Princely Brothers and Sisters, 151–52, and his discussion of the Schlackenwerther Codex. 50. Machilek, “Die Zisterze Langheim als fra¨nkisches Hauskloster,” 167–76, and Dippold, “Non verus et proprius monasterii fundator,” 339–58. These scholars describe the process by which these noble families came to be remembered as Langheim’s founders. Women in the Andechs family did not marry into the Orlamu¨nde and Truhendigen families until the middle of the thirteenth century. 51. Like many Cistercian abbeys, Langheim never received a foundation charter. The original records of the first donations to Langheim no longer exist, and those copies and summaries still extant may depict a later reconstruction of the monastery’s history. Even the date of Langheim’s foundation, now thought to be August 1, 1132, was malleable; in the fourteenth century, the Cistercian order dated Langheim’s establishment to 1133 when Langheim lost in its rivalry with the abbey of Heilsbronn for precedence. Geldner, ed., Das a¨lteste Urbar, 8–9. This cartulary provides a fifteenth-century copy of a retrospective charter that bishop Egilbert of Bamberg may have issued in 1142. See also Gelder, Langheim, 16–18. Geldner thinks the foundation stone was laid in 1132, and the monks moved from Ebrach in 1133. 52. According to an early life of St. Otto, written by an anonymous monk of Pru¨fening, Otto founded at least fourteen new abbeys, some black monks, some Cistercian, and some regular canons. “The Life of Bishop Otto of Bamberg,” in Lyon, translator, Noble Society, 105–10. 53. Fichtenau, “Bamberg, Wu¨rzburg und die Stauferkanzlei,” 241–85; Juritsch, Geschichte des Bishofs Otto I., 80–82. 54. For Otto’s effort to strengthen episcopal presence in the upper Main, see Dippold, “Non verus et proprius monasterii fundator,” 345, and Geldner, Langheim, 19. For the bishop’s worry about the growing territorial ambitions of secular families in the region, see Zink, St. Theodor, 26. 55. Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 74–76, 300, 305–6. 56. Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 188–89. 57. Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 193. 58. The Relatio de piis operibus Ottonis episcopi Bambergensis, MGS SS 15/2, 1159, notes that, just before Otto’s death in 1139, Otto gave an estate (predium) that he had received from a ministeriale named Ocgoz of Memmelsdorf for the foundation of Langheim. Kunizza is called Richiza in this document, but she is identified as the daughter of the Count of Geich. 59. Geldner, ed., Das a¨lteste Urbar, 8–9. But see Machilek, “Zisterze Langheim als fra¨nkisches Hauskloster,” 168, who thinks Kunizza’s gift must have been made in 1138/9, after the death of her father in 1138 and before Otto’s death in 1139.

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60. Bamberg, Staatsarchiv Kloster Langheim Urkunden 1152 II 20, in http://monasterium .net/mom/DE-StABa/Langheim/1152_II_20/charter, accessed 2017–09–10Z. 61. Geldner, Langheim, 19. 62. Zink, St. Theodor, no. 8, pp. 280–84. The charter, issued by bishop Hermann II in 1174, lists gifts negotiated by his predecessor, Eberhard, who died in 1170. 63. This Otto first appears as a clericus in a charter from 1151/2 in which his brother gave property to the monastery of Admont, and he may for a time have been a cathedral canon in Bamberg. In the 1160s and 1170s, he appears in imperial charters, suggesting he served as an ally of Frederick Barbarossa. Between 1165 and 1170, he became the bishop-elect of Brixen but was never consecrated. By 1174, he had left the imperial court to become cathedral provost at Bamberg, and in 1177, he became bishop. See Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 217–19, 220–26. Lyon’s genealogical chart, on p. 16, shows that Kunigunde, the sister of Otto and Berthold II, was a nun at Admont. See Figure 5. 64. Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 220–26. These include his nephews Henry, the son of Otto’s sister Gisela, elected bishop of Wu¨rzberg in 1191, and Poppo, elected bishop of Bamberg in 1237, and his grandnephews Eckbert and Berthold. 65. Otto II issued ten extant charters for Langheim. Bamberg, Staatsarchiv Kloster Langheim Urkunden, in http://monasterium.net/mom/DE-StABa/Langheim/fond?block⳱1噛ch9r. 66. Geldner, Langheim, 57. The foundation and patronage of Diessen had helped the Andechs consolidate their influence around Ammersee. See Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 68–69. For Diessen’s charters, see Schlo¨gl, ed., Die Traditionen und Urkunden des Stiftes Diessen. The bishops and counts in the Andechs family continued to make donations to Diessen even after Langheim became a family necropolis. 67. Among those making the request was Otto II, Bishop of Friesing (1184–1220), the son of Mechthild’s sister, Gisela of Andechs, and Count Diepold of Berg. See Engelhard’s letter to Herman, abbot of Ebrach, in Schwarzer, “Vitae et Miracula,” 523–24, and his letter of dedication to the countess “N.”, VM, 436–47. 68. VM, 437. 69. VM, 436. It may be in response to this shift in attention that the Diessen canons, sometime between 1204 and 1210, compiled a codex containing both a necrology and property notices that asserted the importance of the Andechs family to the community. See Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 123–25, who places the construction of this codex in the context of the political unrest of the early thirteenth century. 70. Munich BSB Clm 1076. The first eighty-three folios of the codex contain saints’ lives marked with feast day divisions for liturgical readings. The lives and passions reflect Diessen’s regional loyalties as well as an interest in balancing the active and contemplative life that is characteristic of Augustinian canons. They include the lives of Martha and Mary Magdalene and of Emperor Henry II and his wife Kunigunde, as well as the passions of St. Dorothy, the 10,000 virgins of Cologne, and St. Thomas of Canterbury. The rest of the codex, in a fourteenth-century Gothic hand and with different rulings, contains compositions of Bernard of Clairvaux and was probably bound with the earlier quires at a later date. Mechthild was never officially canonized. Henry II was canonized in 1146, Thomas in 1173, and Kunigunde in 1200. 71. See the argument of Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 98–109. The scene describes Mechthild’s parents, Count Bertold and Sophia of Istria, appearing at Mechthild’s deathbed to give Diessen a tithe at Oberding, but Bertold died nine years before Mechthild. Unusually, the conversation employed the diplomatic language of a charter, including a clause of imprecation

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on all who might violate the agreement. In 1248, Duke Otto of Bavaria made a gift to Diessen “as compenstion for the tithe at Oberding, which my illustrious father Duke Louis of Bavaria and I took away from this church a long time ago,” Schlo¨gl, ed., Die Traditionen und Urkunden des Stiftes Diessen, no. 26, p. 150; see Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 104. The scene does not appear in the version of the vita recorded in Poznan´ Rkp. 156, fols. 111v–12r. 72. Still later copies of the vita suggest that liturgical usage of the vita may have been Diessen’s alone. The vita appears in a fifteenth-century miscellany (Munich BSB Clm 11884) and again in a sixteenth-century collection of monastic texts, probably from the Bavarian abbey of Tergensee (Munich BSB Clm 1470). Neither of these volumes was a legendary. 73. Poznan´ 156, fol. 117v. For more information on this manuscript, see Appendix. 74. See Chapter 4. 75. This text was previously unknown. It is the first text in the codicological unit of Poznan´ 156 that containes Engelhard’s compositions, and its author, “E,” uses some of Engelhard’s favorite phrases and Biblical passages. The author repeatedly called himself “indoctus,” and, as Engelhard did in his letter of dedication to the nuns of Wechterswinkel, he invited his readers to correct him. As Engelhard did in one of his letters to Erbo, this author also mentions the wood of Moses (Exod. 15:25) and the salt of Elijah (2 Kings 2:20) that sweetened the water as a metaphor for his work of writing. Poznan´ 156, fols. 2r–3r. See Appendix. 76. She and her husband also took in her brothers, Eckbert, bishop of Bamberg, and Henry II, Margrave of Istria, after they were suspected of involvement in the murder of Phillip of Swabia in 1208. They seem as well to have supported Gertrude’s youngest brother, Berthold, who was archbishop of Kalocsa. Andreas’s support of Gertrude’s German relatives led to political unrest. Gertrude was murdered in 1213 and buried in the Cistercian abbey of Pilis. Laszlovszky, “Local Tradition or European Patterns?,” 92. 77. For these women, see Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 281, and his Princely Brothers and Sisters, 184, and see Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses, 204, who thinks that Hedwig was raised at Kitzingen instead of St. Theodor. For the interactions between Hedwig, Elizabeth, Agnes, Anna, and the Franciscans, see Day, “Constructing Dynastic Franciscan Identities,” 187–216. 78. See Appendix for an analysis of these manuscripts. 79. Engelhard noted in his dedicatory letter to “T” that he had based this work on material from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and that he had nearly made a mistake concerning the Assumption of Mary, Poznan´ 156, fols. 2r–3r. For Gerhoh’s letter, see L’oeuvre litte´raire de Ge´roch de Reichersberg, 245–6, and Gerhoh of Reichersberg, Opera inedita, 1.366–76. The Poznan´ 156 version of the letter starts part of the way in, with “Unde vos, karissime in Christo sorores,” 1.370. 80. There is a copy of Gerhoh’s letter and sermon in Admont, Stiftsbibliothek 579 (twelfth century), fols. 35r–52v. Gerhoh wrote at least one other letter to a sister at Admont, and two copies of his letter on the Assumption are preserved in Admont manuscripts; see Beach, “Voices from a Distant Land,” 37–38. 81. Beach, Trauma of Monastic Reform, 74. 82. It is possible that “T” or “Tilde” was instead the abbess Mechthild of Wechterswinkel, who may have been the recipient of Engelhard’s libellus. But if so, why not address her as “M” and as abbess, as he did in his letter dedicating his story collection? 83. These family connections are remembered as well in the fourteenth-century Schlackenwerther Codex, which provides two accounts of Hedwig’s life as well as an image (Getty

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Museum MS. Ludwig XI 7, fol. 10v) depicting Hedwig with parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews; Lyon, Princely Brothers and Sisters, 150–51. 84. See, for instance, Bernold of Constance, cited in Hotchin, “Female Religious Life,” 61. See also Gilomen-Schenkel, “Double Monasteries in the South-Western Empire,” 47–74, and Ku¨sters, “Formen und Modelle religio¨ser Frauengemeinschaften,” 2.195–220. 85. Gilomen-Schenkel, “Double Monasteries in the South-Western Empire,” 62–66; Beach, Women as Scribes, 113–15; and Beach, Trauma of Monastic Reform, 89. 86. See, for instance, Gerhoh’s letter to the nuns about the Assumption of Mary and his Liber de laude fidei, both of which elaborate on the trope of a “mulier fortis”; L’oeuvre litte´raire de Ge´roch de Reichersberg, 246–47; Beach, Trauma of Monastic Reform, 74. See also Morrison, “I Am You,” 220–23. 87. See the collection of essays in Mews, ed., Listen, Daughter. 88. Hotchin, “Female Religious Life,” 69–70. 89. VM c. 24, p. 447. 90. See Degler-Spengler, “The Incorporation of Cistercian Nuns into the Order,” 85–134, and the critique offered by Berman, “Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?,” 853–54. For earlier scholarship that emphasized the monks’ suspicion of Cistercian women, see Bolton, “Mulieres Sanctae,” 141–58; Southern, Western Society, 315–18; Thompson, “The Problem of the Cistercian Nuns,” 227–52. 91. Berman, “Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?,” 825–33, and White Nuns, 8–17. 92. As Anne Lester points out, scholars are accustomed to considering gender differences when analyzing twelfth-century religious life, and they take as a model for all religious women the abbess Heloise’s concern that the Benedictine Rule established practices for men that were not appropriate for women; Creating Cistercian Nuns, 84. See also Idung of Pru¨fening, who defended Cistercian abbots for not taking on the direction of nuns (3.13) but also celebrated the “delicate” women who could endure a harsh life since they “observe the Rule as it really is and imitate [the monks of] our Order.” Cistercians and Cluniacs, trans. O’Sullivan and Leahy,115. 93. Herman of Tournai, De miraculis sanctae Mariae Laudunensis, PL 156: 1001–2. 94. Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, 84; Guignard, Monuments primitifs, lxxvii–lxxxviii, 407–642. 95. Waddell, Primitive Cistercian Breviary, 37–38. 96. Williams, “Early Cistercian Nuns,” 180–81. Tart was about 20 kilometers from Cıˆteaux. 97. Barrie`re, “The Cistercian Convent of Coyroux,” 76–82. 98. Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, 57–72. 99. Berman, Cistercian Evolution, 234. 100. Canivez, Statuta I, 405 (1213: 3); Statuta II, 67–68 (1228: 12, 15–16). 101. Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, 27–36. Berman and others have criticized this criterion for determining the affiliation of women’s houses. Previous summaries of Wechterswinkel’s charters are Himmelstein, ed., “Das Frauenkloster Wechterswinkel,” 113–76, and the reprint of the register (without witnesses) is in Wieland, “Kloster Wechterswinkel,” 257–65, 321–29, 353–57. For other histories of Wechterswinkel, see Krenig, “Mittelalterliche Frauenklo¨ster,” 19; Krenig, “Rechtliche Voraussetzungen und Organisationsformen,” 21–28; and Bungert, “Das Frauenkloster Weshterswinkel,” 309–11.

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102. “Qualiter astiori cordis intuitu contemplantes religionem, deuotionem, abstinentiam et omnimodam sanctimoniam fratrum et sororum in Wetherswinkel deo famulantium,” Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, no. 2, p. 66. Embrico also helped establish the Cistercian monastery of Ebrach and may have supported the Premonstratensian community of Zell, with its associated women’s house of Boleswiler. 103. Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, no. 3, p. 70. 104. See charter no. 2 in Thuringia sacra: I, 40–43. The archbishop of Mainz also confirmed that the election of the abbess would take place according to the Rule of St. Benedict, language similar to that used by the bishop of Wu¨rzburg in his charter for Wechterswinkel. Following the Benedictine Rule and Cistercian customs, is not, of course, exclusive. A number of later charters also note that the women at Ichtershausen followed Cistercian customs, for instance, the archbishop’s charter of 1184 in Thuringia sacra, no. 17, p. 59. 105. Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, no. 4, p. 72. 106. Gertrude was the sister of Conrad III and the aunt of Frederick Barbarosa. For a discussion of the political and religious motivations behind this new establishment, see Zink, St. Theodor, 25–33. 107. Herman had been one of the founders of Ebrach, and the funds from his divestment of possessions were used to found the Cistercian abbey of Bildhausen. Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, no. 10, pp. 79–80. 108. Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, III, nos. 232, 233, pp. 31–32. 109. Zink, St. Theodor, no. 10, pp. 287–89. This charter was from the papal legate Peter of Tusculum and was issued from Ebrach. Gertrude’s husband, Herman von Stahleck was an important patron of Ebrach. 110. Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, no. 51, p. 128. 111. Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, no. 4, pp. 71–72. 112. Wagner posits that this was the Fourth Lateran Council. It also could have been the First Council of Lyons in 1244, but Gregory IX issued his bull describing Wechterswinkel as Cistercian in 1241. Alexander’s bull is no. 65, pp. 151–54. 113. Even after 1298, when Wechterswinkel was officially affiliated with the monastery of Bildhausen, itself a foundation of Ebrach, the bishop of Wu¨rzburg retained the pastoral care of the nuns; Krenig, “Rechtliche Voraussetzungen und Organisationsformen,” 24. 114. See above for an “Engelhardus” who accompanied the abbot of Ebrach to Wechterswinkel in 1181. Engelhard’s foster father, Volmar, witnessed the bishop’s first charter for St. Theodor, and the monastery of Langheim offered an early donation to the nuns; Zink, St. Theodor, nos. 5–6, pp. 273–77. Volmar “decanus” also appears on a bishop’s charter in 1145 to the hospital, no. 4, pp. 272–73. For the Andechs, see Lyon, “Cooperation, Compromise,” 231, and Zink, St. Theodor, no. 8, pp. 280–84. See also Albrecht, “Der Kreuzgang von St. Theodor.” Ebrach also had connections with St. Theodor. See Zink, St. Theodor, no. 10, pp. 287–89. 115. Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, no. 28, pp. 101–2. 116. Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, 37–41. 117. “Fateor, mulier sum ego, uiris me non comparo, patrem me fore non deopto, uirtute dico, non dignitate. Uirorum est facere grandia, grauia ferre, quorum utinam uirtutis sine dignitate sit michi, nam ill non sufficio, hanc etiam paruulus, etiam me qualem nostis homunculus ambio.” Letter 2, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abot Erbo,” 67/68: 25. 118. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs 12.9, 23.2, 73.4; SBO 1.65–66, 1.128, 2.235. 119. Engh, Gendered Identities, 407–8.

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120. “Domine et matri M venerabili atque amabili in Christo abbatisse in wehterswinchel, sanctoque ac deo dilecto conventui filiarum eius E ipsarum servus et filius, debitum utriusque sed filii amplius.” Poznan´ 156, fol. 49r. 121. See McNamer for the relationship between the author’s and the recipient’s “I”; Affective Meditation, 67–73. 122. B. Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist, 21, points out that there were many women who wrote texts addressed to a male audience and men who read texts addressed to a female audience. Engelhard, however, intended his stories for both male and female readers. See also Castelli, “I Will Make Mary Male,” 29–50. 123. For Cistercian depictions of abbots, see Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 47–51, 65–66. 124. VM c. 8–9, pp. 438–39. 125. See the stories about Gotschalk (EB c. 10, fols. 54v–55r) and abbot Pons (EB c. 9, fols. 53r–54v) in Chapters 4 and 6. 126. See Chapter 6. 127. Newman, “Real Men and Imaginary Women,” 1184–213, and (forthcoming) “Assigned Female at Death,” in which I abandon my earlier analysis of “Hildegund” in terms of cross-dressing and disguise and instead read the story using trans theory. See also McGuire, “Written Sources and Cistercian Inspiration,” 247–54; Liebers, “Eine Frau War Dieser Mann,” 140–42, and Hotchkiss, Clothes Make the Man, 33–48. 128. For a fluidity of gender within male Cistercian communities, in which monks learned to become better men by performing the multiple feminine possibilities developed by Bernard of Clairvaux’s exegesis of the Song of Songs, see Engh, Gendered Identities, especially 1–17 and 325–99. 129. “Femina fuit hic homo; nemo cognovit, quamquam hoc infirmitas crebra clamaverit. Quid faceret? Viriliter agere noluit, obstitit sexus natura, maxime apud nos, ubi cuncta sunt fortia.” Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 516; EB c. 34, fols. 74v–75r. 130. “Sed quid in illa videre femineum, quid alienum aut novum suspicari, et diebus istis inauditum feminam attemptare tam arduum?” Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 516–17; EB c. 34, fol. 75r. 131. Engelhard differs from the other authors who told this story. See, for instance, the vita by Joseph’s anonymous companion, which lingered on the appearance of the body and noted that the breasts had been constricted by a bandage “lest they flopped or hung down and showed her to be a woman while she lived.” Vita S. Hildegundis Virginis, 5.32, p. 787. 132. “Quia Joseph masculum, et non feminam significaret.” Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 521; EB c. 34, fol. 78r. 133. “[Q]uod in puella tam tenera diabolo illusisset dei virtus et dei sapientia Christi,” Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 520; EB c. 34, fol. 77v. There are echoes here of Hildegard of Bingen’s hymn to Saint Ursula, in which the devil is choked by the sacrifice of Ursula and her companions; see Newman, Sister of Wisdom, 225–28, 280–81. 134. “Fortiter siquidem et non diu in bello factura fortes pugnas aggressa est, ut regi suo tanto cresceret gloria, quanto infirmiori militi fieret a forti hoste victoria.” Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 520; corrected from EB c. 34, fol. 77v. For a study of Bernard’s parables, see Bruun, Parables. 135. “Velim hanc miraculo feminis, viris exemplo, ut glorientur ille, illi erubescant, quod hodieque non desint in feminis, que pro Christo audeant fortia, quod in viris pars maxima

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mulierum sectantur infirma. Nulli tamen feminarum similia suaserim, quia multis par fortitude, sed dispar est fortuna, et eodem belli discrimine sepe cadit fortior, quo vincit infirmior.” Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 520; EB c. 34, fol. 77v. 136. Simmons, “The Abbey Church at Fontevraud,” 83.

Chapter 2 1. Letters 2 and 3, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68:26. The Cistercian statutes adopted in 1134 prohibit monks from writing new works without permission from the Chapter General, a prohibition repeated in 1202 in the Libellus definitionum. Conrad of Eberbach relates that Guerric of Igny remembered on his deathbed that he had written without consent and ordered his work burned (Lucet, ed., La codification cistercienne, 171–72; EM 3.9). 2. “Cuius scripta michi plus dulcia melle fauoque; beatum profecto me dixerim diuino munere, tam sagacem et familiarem studiis meis asciuisse collegam. Amplexabor eum, noster dum spiritus aura uescitur etherea litterisque hinc inde discurrentibus consolari precordia mea et releuari oportunum iudicauerim. Quoniam uero, ut ait sapiens, cum amicis orationes breues, longas amicicias habere debemus, paucis uos alloquens experientiam dilectionis uestre deuotis precibus sollicitare non desino, quatinu s omnia calamo ingenii uestri exarata michi amico uestro imitanda potius quam examinanda porrigantur.” Letter 1, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 24–25. 3. “Nil equidem salubrious, nil iocundius exibere michi in pignus amicicie poterit dilectionis uestre experientia, quam ut sitibundi cordis mei ariditas innouata rerum ac scriptorum manerie fecundetur.” Letter 3, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 26. 4. “Hinc accidit michi uobiscum quod iob cum deo: auditu auris audiui te, nunc autem oculus meus uidet te. Dilexi uos etiam priusquam uiderem, uidi et dilexi amplius dixique cum regina saba: uerus est sermo quem audiui, uicisti famam uirtutibus tuis.” Letter 2, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 25. 5. For classical expectations in letter writing, see Ebbeler, Disciplining Christians, 20–23. For medieval epistolary friendships, see Haseldine, “The Monastic Culture of Friendship,” 177–202. 6. Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 189–92. See also Bedos-Rezak’s discussion of the symbiotic relationship between authors and (especially public) texts, When Ego Was Imago, 132–39. 7. “Vix audeo acquiescere, cum sciam difficile doctis indocti verba placere. Qui ad pondus et mensuram et rationem more Dei volunt cuncta consitituere, et constituta ostendere, mallem illos arripuisse opus, et michi calumniandi occassionem vel causam abstulisse. Sed ipsis dedignantibus, et circa Leges vel Decreta occupatis, ego rusticandi studiosus, vitam aggrediar feminae beate.” VM, 437. 8. Le Goff, Medieval Imagination, 78. See also Bremond, Le Goff, and Schmitt, L’“exemplum”; Welter, L’exemplum dans la litte´rature religieuse; Bremond, “L’exemplum me´die´val,” 21–28; Tilliette, “L’exemplum rhe´torique,” 43–66; von Moos, “L’exemplum et les exempla des preˆcheurs,” 67–82; and Polo de Beaulieu, Collomb, and Berlioz, eds., Le tonnerre des exemples, 11–13. 9. Schmitt, Ghosts, 124–25; McGuire, “The Cistercians and the Rise of the Exemplum,” 214–15. 10. “Historiam hanc scripsi,” Letter 4, in Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 29; “Sed unum pretermitto miraculum . . . ,” letter to Herman of Ebrach,

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Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 524. The Collectaneum introduces the table of contents for its stories as “capitula de diuersis uisionibus atque miraculis.” Herbert of Clairvaux called his work a “liber miraculorum.” The Collectio has a seventeenth-century title, “Summa virtutum et vitiorum incerti authoris.” 11. Peter von Moos does not consider “exempla” a genre but rather a “procedure of persuasion,” “L’exemplum et les exempla des preˆcheurs,” 71. Tilliette considers it a rhetorical ornament, “L’exemplum rhe´torique,” 49–55. See also Roller, “Exemplarity in Ancient Rome,” 1–56. 12. Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, 27–36; Sanok, Her Life Historical, 1–23; Smith, Excessive Saints, 4–5; and Sweetman, “Thomas of Cantimpre´, Performative Reading, and Pastoral Care,” 133–68. 13. Herman, “Cognition, Emotion and Consciousness,” 245–59. 14. Rapp, “Storytelling as Spiritual Communication,” 431–48; Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert, 134–80. 15. Kruger, “Writing and the Liturgy of Memory,” 494–96. 16. Lake, “Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints,” 245. 17. Saurette, “Rhetorics of Reform,” 171–216. See also Peter the Venerable, De miraculis libri duo; Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin, 117–50. 18. Mula, “Twelfth- and Thirteenth-century Cistercian Exempla Collections,” 903–12. 19. Caroline Walker Bynum suggests that the appeal of these stories was associated with the medieval concept of “wonder” (admiratio), and the ways stories of the bizarre, the eerie, and the miraculous served as signs to encourage belief; Metamorphosis and Identity, 37–76. See also Brewer, Wonder and Skepticism, 1–9. For a discussion of English collections of miracle stories, mostly associated with saints’ cults, see Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, 9–27. For an early recognition of the importance of these sorts of tales, see Southern, “The English Origin of the Miracles of the Virgin,” 176–216. 20. Jamroziak, Cistercian Order, 43–92. 21. Leclercq, “Aspects de la vie cistercienne,” 197–216, and M. Newman, “Foundation and Twelfth-Century,” 25–37. 22. McGuire, in “The Cistercians and the Rise of the Exemplum,” 211–67, argues for a four-stage development of Cistercian exempla collections from primitive, to structured, to submerged, to literary. His typology is important and highly influencial but it tends to conflate the exemplum with the collection. 23. The process was not easy, as the papal curia had started to develop new procedures for saint-making, and many of the men close to Bernard were uncertain how to reconcile his political activities, and the failure of the Second Crusade, with his spiritual message. See Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, 23–90. 24. Chronicon Clarevallense, PL 85: 1249. For the attribution of this collection to Prior John, see McGuire, “A Lost Clairvaux Exemplum Collection Found,” 26–62, but see Collectaneum, liv–lvi, for a caution about this attribution. 25. Collectaneum, 5. 26. Collectaneum, 6. Polo de Beaulieu, “L’e´mergence de l’auteur,” 175–200. See also Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 1–3. For a contrasting example, see Herrard of Hohenbourg, in Griffiths, Garden of Delights, 85–86. 27. Collectaneum, xxi–xliii; McGuire, “A Lost Clairvaux Exemplum Collection Found,” 26–62, and “Les mentalite´s des cisterciens,” 107–45.

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28. This has been recently edited by Zichi, Fois, and Mula, Liber visionum et miraculorum Clarevallensium. I give the numbering from the older edition in the PL in parentheses. 29. Griesser, Exordium magnum cisterciense, translated by Ward and Savage, The Great Beginning of Cıˆteaux. See also McGuire, “Structure and Consciousness in the Exordium magnum cisterciense,” 33–90. 30. Collectio exemplorum Cisterciensis, ed. J. Berlioz and Polo de Beaulieu, xxvii. McGuire, in “The Cistercians and the Rise of the Exemplum,” 215, considers this a primitive collection, because of the twenty-five stories that appear “sine tytulo” and have no apparent organization. Still, the compiler organized the great majority of his material according to moral categories. 31. Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, ed. Strange, translated by Scott and Swinton Bland. See also Smirnova, ed., The Art of Cistercian Persuasion; McGuire, “Written Sources and Cistercian Inspiration,” 227–82; and his “Friends and Tales in the Cloister,” 167– 247. For a collection from England, also assembled around 1200, that combines Cistercian and non-Cistercian tales and organizes them by their types of vision, see Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, ed. and trans. Easting and Sharpe. 32. See also Mula, “Looking for an Author,” 5–25; Birkett, The Saints’ Lives of Jocelin of Furness, 115–40; Freeman, Narratives of a New Order, 127–31. For the relationship of exempla to “history,” see also Berlioz, “Exemplum et histoire,” 49–86. 33. Griesser edited another short Cistercian thirteenth-century collection as “Ein Himmeroder Liber miraculorum,” 257–74. Oppel, in “Eine kleine Sammlung cisterciensischer Mirakel,” 5–28, edited a ten-story collection, appended to a copy of Herbert of Clairvaux’s stories in Munich, BSB Clm 6914, fols. 37r–45r. The manuscript is a late thirteenth-century codex from the Cistercian community of Fu¨rstenfeld; eight of the stories are from the early thirteenth century, and three are set at Ebrach. The last tale, the eucharistic vision of Rudolf of Kaisheim, appears in manuscripts connected to Aldersbach, Salem, and Heiligenkreuz. See Schmidt, ed., “Luzifer in Kaisheim,” 191–201. 34. The thirteenth-century manuscripts from Poznan´ add another eight tales, most of which can be attributed to Engelhard with some confidence, and the letters to Erbo add three more that are not included elsewhere. See Appendix. 35. “Siqua horum venerint ad manus non his nostra preiudicent sed consonant sibi, utraque sint rata.” “Letter of dedication,” EB fol. 49v. 36. Caesarius of Heisterbach, Fragmente der Libri VIII Miraculorum, 3.19 reused Engelhard’s c. 14, and Caesarius’s 3.58 reused c. 13. 37. For another, slightly later collection from Morimond’s affiliation, see Oppel, “Eine kleine Sammlung cisterciensischer Mirakel.” Oppel, 6, posits that this collection may have been written at Aldersbach, a community of Augustinian canons initially established by Bishop Otto I of Bamberg in 1127 that Bishop Egibert of Bamberg associated with the Cistercians and the abbey of Ebrach in 1146. 38. Other monastic communities too were interested in preserving the vestiges of oral communications. See Koopmans, Wonderful to Relate, 28–46. 39. See Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 174–86; Stock, Implications of Literacy, 30–87; Bedos-Rezak, When Ego Was Imago, 13–36; Smalley, Study of the Bible, 200–13, 216–24. The Cistercians were early in developing aids for their readers. See Falmagne, “Les Cisterciens et les nouvelles formes d’organisation,” 93–132, and Rouse, “Cistercian Aids to Study,” 123–34. 40. Rankovic´, “The Oral-Written Continuum as a Space,” 39–71. 41. Melve, “Mapping Public Debates Along the Oral-Literate Continuum,” 73–100. 42. See Lutter, “Ways of Knowing and Meanings of Literacy,” 355–76.

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43. See also Idung of Pru¨fening’s Dialogue, in Cistercians and Cluniacs, for a midcentury Cistercian text that also relies on a written archive. 44. Collectio, xxvii. 45. Polo de Beaulieu, “Traces d’oralite´,” 139–58; McGuire, “Friends and Tales in the Cloister,” 167–247, and his “Written Sources and Cistercian Inspiration,” 277–82. 46. Mostert, “Orality, Non-Written Communication, and Monastic Studies,” 387. 47. Compare, for instance, LM 42 (2.9) to EM 3.18. 48. “Nichil horum scribo que legerim vel scripta comperi, sed quedam que visu, plurima que auditu didicerim.” EB fol. 49v. Engelhard makes a similar point in a letter to Erbo, telling him, “I write all that I hear [scribam omne quod audio].” See Letter 4, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 66/67: 29. 49. “Quanta audivimus et cognovimus ea et patres nostri narraverunt nobis que male deleret oblivio, obliviscenda tamen si non reciperentur et affigerentur stilo.” EB fol. 49v. 50. See especially Bamberg, Staatsarchiv Kloster Langheim Urkunde 1207 (c), in http:// monasterium.net/mom/DE-StABa/Langheim/1207%28c%29/charter, accessed 2018–06–03Z, but also Urkunde 1207(b) and Urkunde 1216. 51. “In dacia contigit istud abbas eius nostris abbatibus retulit sed et ipse grandis materia esset loquendi, nam mortuus fuerat et revixit. Scriptum comperi hoc, idcirco non scribo nec in segetem alienam manum mitto. Intacta ab aliis dicam, plurima sunt utinam sint utilia.” EB c. 8, fol. 53r. Cf. Deut. 23:25. Again, he emphasized the spoken rather than written nature of his message (i.e., “dicam” rather than “scribam”). 52. “Sancti Bernardi vita et virtutes immo vita virtutum scriptis mundo innotuit.” EB c. 28, fol. 70v. In comparison, three of the ten stories in the small collection that Oppel connects with Aldersbach come from Clairvaux and mention Bernard, “Eine kleine Sammlung cisterciensischer Mirakel,” 12–17. 53. The Augustinian canons at Diessen eventually considered the pope’s letter important enough to record in Diessen’s cartulary, even though it temporarily took Mechthild away from their community; Schlo¨gl, ed., Die Traditionen und Urkunden des Stiftes Diessen, no. 3, pp. 105–6. 54. “Veniunt ad locum, aperiunt numtium [sic], dant nuntiis litterae testimonium, quorum nobilitas pluris potuit esse quam scriptum.” VM c. 9, p. 439. 55. VM, 437. 56. EB c. 17, fol. 62v. 57. For further discussion of this story, see Newman, “Making Cistercian Exempla,” 45–66. 58. “Nullus ait ordo nulla professio immunis est hinc, sed monachorum quos griseos vocant minus habet.” EB c. 33, fol. 74v. Before the Cistercians began to bleach their robes white, they were often called the gray monks, because of their habits of undyed white wool. 59. “Ille vero monachus fit in ordine nostro, manum habens perforatam, hodieque si vivit, vivens ita de cetero ut mortem anime evaderet et evadendi aliis exempla preberet. Dominus Heinricus abbas ut dixi morimundensis testatus est hec, nam monachus ille in una domorum eius fuit, ipse rem de ore illius audivit, et in manu eius foramen numquam sanandum semper patulum vidit.” EB c. 33, fol. 74v. 60. On the concept of “necromancy,” and the term itself, see Leight, “Nahmanides on Necromancy,” 251–64. See also Kieckhefer, Magic, 151–75. Engelhard appears precocious in his knowledge, especially in his mention of the “Death of the Soul,” which by the fourteenth

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century is a known book of necromancy; Engelhard puns on this title in his final comment on the story; see above. 61. Serlo became abbot of L’Aumone and died in 1181, possibly at the English monastery of Waverley. See Thomson, “Serlo of Wilton,” 2–3. 62. The student wouldn’t stop arguing, went crazy, and died, even eventually arguing with the priest who came to give him last rites. There are echoes here of William of St. Thierry’s account of a proud and puffed up person, referring probably to Abelard, who insisted on arguing with the doorkeeper of heaven. Mirror of Faith, 4.1. 63. “Amodo me nullatenus uidebis, sed teipsum sollicitus considera, quia in proximo talis eris. Infernales enim uniuersi uno ore tibi ista mandant per me: ‘Magistri Serlonis dies breues, annusque eius nugatorius extitit,’ ” Collectaneum, 4.43. 64. “Hanc uisionem ut reor sicut audiui ad edificationem audientium litteris tradidi, que magistrum studium relinquere, seculoque renunciare fecit et ad philosophiam ueram perduxit,” Collectaneum, 4.43. 65. Collectaneum, 4.43. 66. See Schwob, ed., “La le´gende de Serlon de Wilton,” 7:360–77; Haskins, “The University of Paris in the Sermons of the Thirteenth Century,” 12; Haure´au, “Me´moire sur les re´cits d’apparitions,” 239–63; Stephen of Bourbon, Tractatus, ed. Berlioz, 23. For another example, see the early twelfth-century story from Monte Cassino, the “Visio Alberici,” initially told to a monk by a ten-year-old boy. Once the boy became a monk, he accused the author of falsifying the story. Cited in Gurevich, “Oral and Written Culture,” 65. 67. In the Collectio there is an account of a monk who returns from purgatory and proves to a living monk the pain of its fire by sharing its heat. Collectio, 80.1. 68. The fourteenth-century Pilgrimage of the Life of Man describes a school of necromancy and notes that early members included Solomon, Cyprian, Virgil, and Abelard; see Kieckhefer, Magic, 172. By the fourteenth century, it seems that Serlo’s scholastic milieu and that of the necromancers have merged, and Serlo’s desire to meet the classical scholars in hell may have become intertwined with this lineage of necromancers. 69. See Chapter 4. For an overview of the debates over the “truth” of the account of Herman the Jew, see Schmitt, Conversion of Herman the Jew, 13–27; for Schmitt’s conclusion, that this was an account written to address particular concerns of the Premonstratensian canons at Cappenberg, see 195. Engelhard’s story too is about questions of Jewish and Christian interpretation. 70. EB c. 2–4. See Chapter 4. 71. “Is qui michi retulit, illiteratus fuit, nec ipse, ut uulgo dicitur, ex suo digito suxit, sed a literato rem audiens materne lingue uerba retinuit, alterius lingue uocabula retinere non potuit.” Letter 4, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 29. The phrase “to suck from one’s fingers,” meaning, in essence, to pull something from thin air, is still a German expression. Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch, 14.1891. 72. See, in comparison, Gurevich’s argument about the possibility of accessing “popular culture” in his “Oral and Written Culture,” 52–65. 73. Barrau, “Did Medieval Monks Actually Speak Latin?” 293–318, and Bruce, Silence and Sign Language, 79. 74. “Non abnuo, inquam, qui riuum ad me venientem de ore viri spiritalis exceperim et sine diminution traiecerim nec adiectione corruperim.” Letter 4, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 29.

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75. “Duo adhuc habeo que effundam, retineri nequeunt, tamen ad exitum fervent.” EB c. 33, fol. 73r. 76. “De meo, fateor, nichil affinxi salvo eo, quod scriptoribus licet, si rebus consequencias dedi, si novis apte uetera miscui, si linguam moysi, si salem helisei, si denique ex aqua uinum [Christi] adiunxi, non certe fallendi causa, sed gratia dulcoris augendi. . . . Ego referentem libenter audiui, materiam, fateor, amaui, scripto iudicaui dignam uelim et a me bene digestam.” Letter 4, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 29. 77. See especially the introduction to Legendre, Collectaneum, liv–lv; Polo de Beaulieu, “L’e´mergence de l’auteur,” 175–200. See also Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, 1–8. 78. Engelhard noted that a monk named Bezelin, who brought the story from France, became “accustomed to [reciting] it in praise of those monks and for our education,” and another time Engelhard commented, “I tell this with my abbot as witness, who learned it and related it to us” (“et in laude monachorum illorum et in nostri forma recitare consuevit,” EB c. 14, fol. 59v, and “Abbate meo teste dixi hec, qui rem tunc ut gesta est comperit, et nuper narravit nobis.” EB c. 11, fol. 56v). See also McGuire, “Cistercian Storytelling,” 281–309. 79. Les “Ecclesiastica officia” cisterciens, c. 70, pp. 202–10; Pranger, Artificiality of Christianity, 47. 80. For more on this, see Chapter 6. 81. “Dedi operam hoc modo servire vobis, scribere quod audivi quodque auditu sit utili, credenti et volenti proficere.” EB fol. 49v. 82. “Libellum hunc scripserim in quo dei quesita sit gloria edificatio legenti et venie remuneratio scribenti. . . . Eadem michi persuasit, ut scriberem: persuadeat et legentibus ut adhibeant fidem et que honesta sunt horum dignaque imitatu, venerentur in aliis et exhibeant in se ipsis. Porro et indigna conjunximus, finem illorum ostendentes sine honore, verum et cum horrore, ut quos ad bonum bona non provocant, revocentur a malis vel terrore.” EB fol. 78r. 83. See, for instance, the story of the Cistercian monk who drowned in the sewer (c. 20), discussed in Chapter 6, where Engelhard justified telling tales of Cistercians who died badly. 84. Smirnova, “Caesarius of Heisterbach Following the Rules of Rhetoric,” 79–96. 85. See, for instance, the varied spellings of Wechterswinkel. In Munich BSB Clm 13097, fol. 193v, it is spelled “Weterswink”; in Zwettl 13, fol. 228r, “Wechterswinchel”; and in both Poznan´ manuscripts (Poznan´ 156, fol. 48r, and Poznan´ 178, fol. 42), “Wehterswinch.” In BNF n.a. lat. 2326, fol. 228v, it is spelled “Westerswinkele.” See also the variants in the spelling of Gotschalk: “Gotscalcus” in Munich BSB Clm 13097, fol. 135r; “Gotescalcus” in Zwettl 13, fol. 228rb, “[. . .]scalchus” in Poznan 178, fol. 43v; “Godescalcus” in Poznan 156, fol. 52r. 86. “Per capitula tamen opusculum omne distinxi, ut legenti fastidium tollerem et lassus ad nota signa pausaret, leviusque quod vellet distinctionibus inveniret. Totus in marie personam textus hic vertitur, quasi presenti obsequitur et tamquam facie ad faciem loquitur.” Poznan´ 156, fol. 2v. See also Anselm of Lucca’s prayers to the Virgin that he composed for Matilda of Tuscany, in which Anselm encourages Matilda to imagine herself present at events in Mary’s life; Fulton [Brown], From Judgement to Passion, 226–27. 87. “Cum tamen ego nil finxerim cuius testes autem non dederim aut dare non possim;” EB fol. 78r. “Signabo cum testibus singula.” EB fol. 49v. 88. See, among others, Miller, Biography in Late Antiquity, 134–36; Frazier, “Biography as a Genre of Moral Philosophy,” 215–40; Vauchez, Sainthood, 425–78; Lifshitz, “Beyond Positivism and Genre,” 95–114. 89. Vauchez, Sainthood, 13–21; Schmitt, Holy Greyhound, 9–24.

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90. Vauchez, Sainthood, 25–32. 91. Vauchez, Sainthood, 38. 92. See Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, 43–46, 55–61. The efforts to canonize Bernard started in 1163 and succeeded in 1174. 93. Innocent III, PL 140: 220; see also Andre Vauchez, Sainthood, 27. 94. VM, 436. 95. The revival of an interest in Roman law, part of what Edward Peters calls the “legal revolution of the twelfth century,” in which inquisition and the jury replaced a customary reliance on the judgement of God, also placed an emphasis on “full proof” that required documents or at least two witnesses. See Peters, Torture, 40–44; Baldwin, “Intellectual Preparation for the Canon of 1215,” 616; and Winroth, “The Legal Revolution,” 346–50. 96. Goez, Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit und Archivpflege, 196–203, 209–17; Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 9–36. 97. Witnesses often observed the production of the document rather than the event that symbolically enacted a transfer of property. See Clancy, From Memory to Written Record, 257. The charters of the bishop of Bamberg, even the one from 1207 that takes place at Langheim, have fairly consistent lists of witnesses from his Bamberg retinue, none of whom appear to be monks from Langheim. 98. EB c. 2, fol. 50r. 99. See above and EB fol. 78r; “Ante hos annos comperi rem non incertis testimoniis approbatam, que regulariter operantibus afferat non parum solatii.” EB c. 14, fol. 58v. 100. “Hec sine teste non dixerim.” EB c. 18, fol. 63r. 101. “Tota Francia testis est,” EB c. 32, fol. 72r. “Hec ego primo conversionis mee anno puer audivi, sic testibus affirmatum ut esset indubium.” EB c. 6, fol. 52r. 102. This is likely related to a new prominence of Roman law and its general dismissal of hearsay evidence. 103. Engelhard was an eyewitness to two stories (c. 5, 19) and he knew the protagonist of nine others (c. 2, 5, 7, 10, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25). 104. “In domo nostra res accidit, cuius non unus aut duo sed tota domus in his qui tunc fuere testis extitit.” EB c. 10, fol. 54v. 105. “Et ego quidem, licet tales essent, qui nararre consueuerant, ut eis omnino discredere non possem, desideraui tamen videre hominem et ex ipsius ore audire, quod ei acciderat. Tempore siquidem capituli cisterciensis nondum euoluti anni uidi uirum in abbatum frequentia. Qui cum requisitus a me de his esset, confessus est et non negauit testimonium perhibens ueritati.” Legend of Abbot Simon of Sorø, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 76: 20. 106. “Nec solus ipse, sed tota domus illa in qua res gesta est.” EB c. 13, fol. 57v. 107. “Quia vir magni testimonii testis est eius, a quo et visa.” EB c. 14, fol. 59r. 108. “Mirum certe et incredibile, nisi Becelinus noster et alii plures faterentur et virum et in viro veritatis indicium se vidisse.” EB c. 17, fol. 60v. 109. “Rem aggredior dicere dictam michi, a me creditam, iocundam miraculo, utinam et firmam testimonio. Testem eius dare non possum; cum tamen uni uiro hic rumor ascribatur, qui certe medis et persis, grecis ac barbaris ad fidem faciendam sufficeret, si ipse retulisset. Episcopus, ut fertur, babenbergensis eberhardus roma reciens attulit eum, in alpibus italie accepit illum in monasterio cluniacensis ordinis, cuius michi nomen incogitum.” Letter 4, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 27. 110. See earlier, when Engelhard insists that he did not “suck it from his fingers.”

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111. “Intestatum relinquo illud atque utinam mentirer, sed ab homine didici hoc quo michi nemo verbis visus est cautior, nemo veracior.” EB c. 20, fol. 64v. 112. “Parui uobis, pater honorabilis, scripsi, ut iussistis, uidete, quis credat, quis non mentitum me fuisse redarguat.” Letter 5, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 67/68: 31. 113. “Ne videar amore mentitus.” EB c. 22, fol. 67r. See also Bernard of Clairvaux, who, in Steps of Humility and Pride 4.14, recognized that secular and ecclesiastical courts prohibit special friends from giving witness, lest they mislead by their love.

chapter 3 1. Scholars studying the first half of the twelfth century have critiqued simple distinctions between monastic and scholastic, reminding us, for instance, that Peter Abelard lived as a monk, that Hugh of St. Victor taught Parisian scholars from within a regular community, and that Herrad of Hohenbourg included texts by Peter Lombard and Peter Comestor in writings for nuns. Schoolmen expressed ideas about spiritual growth and the development of virtue akin to those practiced in monastic communities, and monastic libraries collected school texts. See Otten, “In Conscience’s Court,” 53–74; Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text, 8–9; van ’t Spijker, Fictions of the Inner Life; Griffiths, Garden of Delights, 72–75; Pranger, “Elective Affinities,” 55–72; Mews, “Scholastic Theology in a Monastic Milieu,” 217–39; the collected essays in Mews, Reason and Belief; Wei, Intellectual Culture, 52–78; and Ferruolo, Origins of the University, 27–44. 2. A central axiom of visual studies posits that seeing has a history. See Belting, Likeness and Presence, 2–3; Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary, 111–48; B. Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’?,” 1–43; Kessler, Spiritual Seeing, 53–63; Akbari, Seeing Through the Veil, 32–45; and the essays in Hamburger and Bouche´, eds., The Mind’s Eye. For specifically twelfthcentury developments, see Hahn, “Visio Dei,” 169–96; Bynum, Christian Materiality, 37–82; Lipton, Dark Mirror, 95–128; and Camille, Gothic Art, 27–68. Dinzelbacher, Vision und Visionsliteratur, 238–59, notes a shift in accounts of otherworldly visions in the twelfth century; Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 163, does not want to divide the history of vision into two periods on either side of 1200. 3. See especially Pranger, “Medieval Ethics and the Illusion of Interiority,” 13–32, and Stiegman, “Three Theologians,” 100–106. 4. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae 1, 2; de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 221–48; Van Engen, “Faith as a Concept of Order,” 23–30. 5. Even highly educated theologians in the thirteenth century combined syllogistic analyses with pastoral and moral concerns that emphasized the importance of shaping the affect as well as the intellect. See Jordan, Teaching Bodies, especially 69–80, and Smith, Excessive Saints, 32–36. 6. See Appendix. 7. Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, misc. Patr. 43. For the library of the nearby Cistercian community of Ebrach, see Ruf, ed., Mittelalterliche Bibliothekskataloge, 3.3. 8. “Altaris sacri sacramenta sunt hec in quibus aliud cernimus atque aliud credimus. Aliud videretur et aliud est, panis de terra terrenus apparens sed de celo celestis existens. Et esse plus arbitror in re quam vides, credere quam vides aliud, quam id credere quod omnino non vides. Probem hoc. Vita eterna creditur et non videtur, nec difficile istud quia et ego romam non vidi

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quam tamen esse ex certo constat michi. Plurima sunt eiusmodi. Ceterem panem manu hominis confectum, de farina compactum, igne decoctum, attendere et corpus Christi credere arduum est, et tamen iuxta sententiam christi, christi corpus est. Innumera huius rei testimonia et hec credibilia facta sunt nimis, attestata etiam desuper visibilibus signis. Apud nos non defuerunt ista quibus horum dubitatione temptatis per visum ostensa, quibusdam etiam vigilantibus atque inspectantibus ea specie qua creduntur exhibita.” EB c. 1, fols. 49v–50r. See Bell, Image and Likeness, 67, n. 1, on definitions of species. 9. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 272, in The Works of St. Augustine, 3.7, trans. Hill, 300– 301. Latin from PL 38: 1247, “Ista, fratres, ideo dicuntur sacramenta, quia in eis aliud videtur, aliud intelligitur. Quod videtur, speciem habet corporalem, quod intelligitur fructum habet spiritualem.” 10. Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, 20. 11. Colish, Medieval Foundations, 34–35. 12. Colish, Medieval Foundations, 67. 13. Augustine, De doctrina christiana, 2.1.1, trans. R. P. H. Green, 57. 14. Markus, “Saint Augustine on Signs,” 60–83. Although Augustine presented his most explicit discussion of signs in his treatise On Christian Doctrine, the broader question of how language accurately communicates divine things emerges from the Confessions and from De trinitatis and De magistro. 15. Bell, Image and Likeness, especially 42–45. 16. Colish, Medieval Foundations, 30, and Pranger, “Medieval Ethics and the Illusion of Interiority,” 14–24. 17. Augustine, De trinitate, 9.6–7, 15.12. In Confessions, Book 10, Augustine again finds in the senses obstacles to comprehending the stability and truth of God. 18. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 12.6.15, trans. J. H. Taylor. 19. Kruger, Dreaming, 34; B. Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’?,” 6–7; Biernhoff, Sight and Embodiment, 27–28. 20. Harvey, for example, asks whether, in the Confessions, “sensory experience both frames and informs the human-divine encounter Augustine seeks to capture?” Scenting Salvation, 109. See also Miles, “Vision,” 125–42, and MacCormack, Shadows of Poetry, especially 43–87. 21. Markus, Gregory the Great, 48–49; Straw, Gregory the Great, 180–81; and Mews and Renkin, “The Legacy of Gregory the Great,” 333–36. 22. Moreira, “Augustine’s Three Visions,” 7, 12. 23. Stock, Implications of Literacy, 273. 24. Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, 88–89, and Rubin, Corpus Christi, 49–63. See also Browe, “Elevation in der Messe,” 20–66, and Dumoutet, Le de´sir de voir l’hostie. 25. For modern typologies classifying such stories, see Bynum, “Wonder,” in Metamorphosis and Identity, 37–75; Dinzelbacher, “Revelationes”, 16–21; and Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, 100–116. The categories intersect. Wondrous events, for instance, might be revelatory or miraculous and could offer a direct message from a divine being or demonstrate divine intervention in the normal course of events, but they also could be stories of unusual or uncanny occurrences. Visions include accounts of otherworldly journeys, descriptions of encounters with the divine, and tales of saintly apparitions, prophetic dreams, and the miraculous transformation of physical objects. Some of these also offered revelatory messages. Some described mystical experiences of the divine. Some encouraged sinners to reform. The category of miracle overlaps

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with visions, but miracles could also include accounts of healing, of finding lost objects, and of rescues from various perils that do not involve sight. 26. Dinzelbacher, in Christliche Mystik, 9–22, distinguishes between theological reflections and experiential and personal mystical experiences, privileging the seemingly autobiographical as to opposed to the literary character of mystical accounts; see his Vision und Visionsliteratur as well. See McGinn’s review in Cahiers de civilisation me´die´vale, 121–23; Ursula Peters’s stress on the literary construction of mystical accounts in Religio¨se Erfahrung als literarisches Faktum; and B. Newman, God and the Goddesses, 26–31, 294–304. 27. See Chapter 2, especially the discussion of the necromancers. 28. “Volens denique sacrista probare utrum uerum corpus esset quod sibi assistere uidebatur, uirgam quam iuxta se repperit per medium illum, acsi per mediam umbram, sine ullo obstaculo traduxit. . . . Ex hac re liquido colligitur quod beatus Augustinus, libro XII super Genesim ad litteram dicit: ‘Si autem queritur anima cum de corpore exierit’ et cetera que sequuntur, in talibus uisionibus intelligendis, ualde utilia et necessaria sunt.” Collectaneum 4.3. The author does not refer to the part of this chapter in which Augustine says that visits to heaven and hell by the living are out-of-body experiences and thus spiritual visions. 29. For another example of an author questioning whether a vision was spiritual or corporeal, see Oppel, “Eine kleine Sammlung cistercienischer Mirakel,” 13. See also Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, ed. and trans. Easting and Sharpe, 2.119, for Peter’s use of Gregory the Great to discuss the types and reliability of dreams, 55. 30. EB c. 2, 4, 6, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 21. For visions identified after they took place, see c. 8, 9, 12. 31. EB c. 8, 11, 16, 21. For the vision seen while both asleep and awake, c. 16. 32. EB c. 7, c. 15. See also below, where Engelhard contrasts Mechthild’s seeing (vidit) the image of Mary with her vision of Mary (vidit in spiritu), VM c. 26, p. 448. 33. Similarly, in his story of Simon of Sorø, discussed below, he uses “visum est ei” and “ostensa sunt ei”; Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 76: 20. 34. See Chapter 2. 35. A Simon served as abbot of the Danish Cistercian abbey of Sorø between 1164 and 1188. See Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 76: 33–34. 36. “Ostensa sunt ei preter ea quedam alia signa, que ille nemine interpretante sed nescio quo intus illustrante intellexit: oblata est ei patella, sicut illi uisum est, uacua, intus et foris nigerrima; et intellexi, ait, meam uitam per hanc designari, que sterilis erat et inanis et fuligine peccatorum nigerrima excepto eo, quod in quantulacumque potui ueneratione habere studui beatam et gloriosam uirginem genitricem dei Mariam.” Legend of Abbot Simon of Sorø, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 76: 20. 37. “Ne audieris eam, nichil enim boni dicet tibi. Et subito caput eius, que astitit ex media parte quasi scabiosum apparuit moxque disparuit.” Legend of Abbot Simon of Sorø, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 76: 21. 38. “Quo ingrediebatur? ait unus abbatum. Et respondit: Quod oculis uidemus carnalibus, foris uidemus, quod autem spiritus rationalis uidet, intus uidit. Propterea dixi eos ingredi, quia intus uisi sunt.” Legend of Abbot Simon of Sorø, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 76: 21. 39. “Et hic unus abbatum resposondit: Quomodo auditu agnoscere potuisti, an domina esset et non dominus? Et hos, ait, difficile dictu. Est enim res simplex anima rationalis, cuius audisse et uidisse et esse non aliud, sed unum et idem est, quantum ad substantiam. Est namque

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homo ille sicut litterarum peritus, ita rhetorice speculationis non expers.” Legend of Abbot Simon of Sorø, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 76: 21. 40. “Et respiciens uidit ingredientes ad se duos terribiles et enormis altitudinis uiros. . . . Cornua quoque duo protulerunt uterque unum de sinu suo, qualia solent adhiberi nutriendis paruulis nutritum uberibus arescentes inmittentes in auriculas eius et sufflantes in ea.” Legend of Abbot Simon of Sorø, Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 76: 22. 41. The study of medieval doubt is expanding. Flanagan, Doubt in an Age of Faith, explores the various expressions of doubt and uncertainty in twelfth-century Europe, contrasting spiritual doubts to ideas about faith. She critiques Gavin Langmuir’s argument about the relationship between Christian anxiety and the rise of antisemitism, 159–60. See Langmuir, “Peter the Venerable,” 197–208; also see Brewer, Wonder and Skepticism, 9–17, 105–36; Goodich, Miracles and Wonders, 47–68; Arnold, Belief and Unbelief; Susan Reynolds, “Social Mentalities and the Cases of Medieval Scepticism,” 21–41; and Weltecke, “Der Narr Spricht.” 42. Collectaneum 1.13; 2.1; 2.2, 2.22. 43. Collectaneum 2.19. 4.12, and two stories in 4.15. 44. Collectaneum 4.15. 45. Collectaneum 4.12. 46. Collectaneum 2.19. 47. Collectaneum 4.15. 48. EM 6.1. Conrad quoted from Bernard’s On Consideration 5.3.6, and from Gregory the Great’s XL Homiliarum in Evangelia 2.26.1. 49. For more on the way that Conrad rewrote Herbert’s story, see my “Making Cistercian Exempla,” 45–66. 50. “Praefatas reuelationes in quibus non modice consolatum fuisse me memini, ad aliorum eque solamen praesenti paginae intuli.” LM 42 (2.9). 51. Contrast “corporalibus oculis videre mereretur” with “subito aperti sunt intellectuales oculis eius.” EM 3.18. 52. “Qui enim, sicut iam diximus, Christi Domini nostri dulcissimam humanitatem beatis oculis conspexerat, etiam ad sempiterum individuae Trinitatis mysterium contemplandum, quantum quidem homini adhuc mortali carne circumdato possibile erat, mirabili dignatione gratiae Dei admissus est.” EM 3.18, trans. Ward and Savage, 272–78. 53. “Subito aperti sunt intellectuales oculis eius. . . . In ipsa vero inclinatione praedictus servus Dei non quidem scrutans seu commissum fidei secretum irrumpere gestiens, sed pavendo, tremendo et admirando coepit in simplicitate cordis sui meditari, quam sublime et incomprehensibile esset tantae maiestatis arcanum, quam nosse vita et vita aeterna est.” EM 3.18, trans. Ward and Savage, 272–78. 54. Mews, “Faith as Existimatio,” 915–26, and Mews, “Philosophy and Theology,” II, 168–73. 55. Letter 77.7, SBO 7.189, and 77.16, SBO 7.196. Bernard’s responses to Hugh depended on Scriptural authority, a position that Hugh accepted in part but ultimately did not think fully sufficient. 56. Rom. 10:17; Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 77.2, SBO 7.186. See also Sermons on the Song of Songs, 59.9, SBO 2.140. 57. Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 192, SBO 8.43–44 (James no. 321). Mews, “Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard,” 133–68, argues that their differences should be seen in the context of northern French political and religious rivalries. See also Sommerfeldt, Bernard of Clairvaux, 120–35.

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58. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Consideration, 5.3.6, SBO 3.471. See Mews, “Faith as Existimatio,” 915–26. 59. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon 8 on “He who Dwells,” 3–5, in Sermons on Conversion, trans. Saı¨d, 171–74. See also Apologia, 12.28–29 for his critique of artistic images. See Biernhoff, Sight and Embodiment, 34–37. 60. Bynum, “Monsters, Medians, and Marvelous Mixtures,” in Metamorphosis and Identity, 161–62, notes Bernard’s binding of ontological opposites. See also his Sermons on the Song of Songs, 59.9, SBO 2.140, where he discusses hearing and seeing. 61. For a discussion of Bernard on sight, see Biernoff, Sight and Embodiment, 114–20. 62. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Consideration, 5.1.1, 5.2.4, trans. Anderson and Kennan, 139, 142. 63. Bernard of Clairvaux, On Consideration, 5.1–4, trans. Anderson and Kennan, 139–43. For a second typology, see the next section of this chapter. 64. Wei, Intellectual Culture, 52–86; Bell, “Certitudo fidei,” 255–58; Elder, “Introduction,” xxvii, n. 4. 65. Van Engen, “Faith as a Concept of Order,” 19–67. 66. Elder, “Introduction,” xiii–xv. See Mirror of Faith, 4.1, where William describes a proud and puffed up person who insists on arguing with the doorkeeper of heaven. See the echoes in the story of Serlo of Wilton in Chapter 2. 67. Elder, “Introduction,” xvi–xvii; Bell, Image and Likeness, 161; van ’t Spijker, Fictions of the Inner Life, 185–231. William explored recently translated Greco-Arabic medical texts to understand the qualities and capacities of the human body, and he considered body and soul a single psychosomatic whole; see McGinn, ed., Three Treatises on Man, 27–47. 68. William called this movement of the will “affectus,” a term that described the interrelation of will, desire, and love and the process by which the soul learns to love and to accept God’s love. See Bell, Image and Likeness, 127–34; van ’t Spijker, Fictions of the Inner Life, 198–202. 69. Palme´n, Richard of St. Victor’s Theory of Imagination, 45, and William of St. Thierry, Mirror of Faith, c. 19–22, 25, 48–50, 62. 70. William spent the majority of the Mirror of Faith on this second step. See c. 16–17, 19. 71. William of St. Thierry, Mirror of Faith, 9–10, 25. 72. William of St. Thierry, Mirror of Faith, 6; trans. Davis, 16. 73. William of St. Thierry, Mirror of Faith, 11; trans. Davis, 28–32. 74. See also Gertsman, “Inciting Despair,” 121–38, and van ’t Spijker, “Saints and Despair,” 184–205. 75. “Duo latera huius scalae duo sunt genera visionum, corporalis scilicet et spiritualis.” DM 8.1. 76. “Cum aliqua Dei dono corporaliter videntur, et per illa aliquid significatur. . . . Hac visione saepe angeli, nec non et animae sanctorum in subiectis corporibus a mortalibus oculis corporeis contemplantur, ut postea dicetur sub exemplis.” DM 8.1. 77. “Quae fit per imagines sine corporibus, ut fieri solet in extasi et in somnis. Sub hac comprehendamus et visionem intellectualem, licet multum ab ea differat. Quam quidam dicunt esse triplicem. . . . Quid est visi intellectualis? . . . quando nec corpora nec imagines rerum videntur, sed in incorporeis substantiis intuitus mentis mira Dei potentia.” DM 8.1. 78. “Licet visio spiritualis dignior si corporali, magis tamen me delectat audire exempla de ista, quia coelestes spiritus, sive quod maius est, ipsum creatorem spirituum oculis corporeis posse videre, omnibus visionibus antepono.” DM 8.4.

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79. “Nullae etiam visions magis fidem roborant, quam cum eum quem sub specie panis et vini latere credimus, oculis corporeis intuemur.” DM 9.1. 80. “Quia magis in illo operatur fides quam ratio humana. . . . Aliud ibi videtur, et aliud ibi creditur.” DM 9.1. 81. “Ac si ei diceret Dominus: Si non credis sacramento, veritatem discas experimento. Et cum fides via sit ad speciem, species haec sanguinea te reducat ad fidem.” DM 9.18. 82. “Sic mihi satisfecit oratio tuo, ut iam non dico credam, sed quod amplius est, sciam post consecrationem sub specie vini verum esse sanguinem Christi. Cum enim Apostolus dicat, fidem esse substantiam rerum sperandarum, argumentum non apparentium, quae visu tam manifeste ut dictum est percipiuntur, iam non creduntur, sed sciuntur. Quod sub tam multiplici testimonio visum est, me vidisse reputo.” DM 9.23. For an alternative interpretation of this passage, see Justice, “Eucharistic Miracle and Eucharistic Doubt,” 310. For another collection of stories concerned about issues of doubt, especially doubts about the afterlife, see Peter of Cornwall’s Book of Revelations, ed. and trans. Easting and Sharpe, 54–57. 83. DM 9.3, 9,4, 9.5, 9.18, 9.21, 9.22. 84. “Et spero quod per illam a fidem sacramenti sit reductus.” DM 9.19. 85. “Mihi peccatori meique similibus qui saepe de hoc sacramento dubitamus, huiusmodi visiones deberent revelari.” DM 9.3. 86. See Chapter 4 for a fuller discussion of this. 87. See Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity, 70–75, on imagistic modes of religiosity, in which sudden, dramatic, and often horrifying rituals create emotional responses and strong bonds among the participants and invoke particular kinds of memory. 88. “Nam presbyter apud nos hinc temptatus et fluctuans dum oraret; se curari vidit in nocte se altari assistere, missam celebrare, et angelum dei puerum qui benedicendo ex pane fuerat in altari dividere in partes, sibique dicere: vide ne ultra hinc dubites.” EB c. 2, fol. 50r. 89. “Super sunt hodie qui cum sanguinem domini minstrarent communicantibus ad altare, sub eorum manibus et oculis verus ut est sanguis apparuit et in vini speciem puri sicut fuerat denuo rediit.” EB c. 3, fol. 50r. 90. “Nam is qui communicavit interim paralisi dissolutus loquelam perdidit, et ab humero usque deorsum una corporis parte totus exaruit.” EB c. 3, fol. 50r. 91. “Hinc manifestum est quod parcendo deus in sacramento corporis et sanguinis sui speciem occulit, ne sumentibus horrori fit ut videnti panem et vinum in sumendo blandiatur species, credenti carnem et sanguinem opituletur fides.” EB c. 3, fol. 50r. 92. See the discussion of Peter Damian and the revelation to the monk of Evesham, in Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 175. 93. As has often been noted, Bernard conceived of the body as divinely created and as so intimately linked to the soul that the soul longed for it before its final resurrection. See Sermons on the Song of Songs, 24.6, SBO 1.57, and On Loving God, 11.30, SBO 3.145. 94. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 31.4, SBO 1.220–22. 95. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 31.5, SBO 1.222. 96. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 31.9, SBO 1.225. 97. Whereas Augustine had stressed the importance of memory in recalling the divine image within the soul, Bernard added to this the importance of recalling and transforming worldly experiences. See Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux, 11–12. 98. Wei, Intellectual Culture, 52–86, and Ferruolo, Origins of the University, 27–44, who is not interested in Hugh’s idea of sacrament, and who sees a stronger opposition between monastery and school than does Wei.

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99. “Sacramentum est corporale vel materiale elementum foris sensibiliter propositum ex similitudine repraesentans, et ex institutione significans, et ex sanctificatione continens aliquam invisibilem et spiritalem gratiam.” Hugh of St. Victor, De Sacramentis, 1.9.2, PL 176: 317. See also Lynch, Cleansing of the Heart, 14–16. 100. Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments, 420–21; Finn, “The Sacramental World in the Sentences,” 567–69. The classic historical treatment of medieval definitions of sacraments is Van den Eynde, Les de´finitions des sacrements. 101. Stock, Implications of Literacy, 324–25; Palme´n, “The Experience of Beauty,” 234–53. 102. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis, 1.10.2, PL 176: 329–30; see also the translation by Deferrari, 167. 103. Palme´n, Richard of St. Victor’s Theory of Imagination, 40–44. 104. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis, 1.10.3, PL 173: 330; trans. Deferrari, 168. 105. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis, 1.10.9, PL 176: 341–44; trans. Deferrari, 181. 106. See Chapter 2. 107. “Contemplantibus nobis non ea qua videntur, sed quae non videntur; quae enim videntur temporalia sunt, quae autem non videntur aeterna.” VM c. 19, p. 444. 108. “Gaude et laetare nunc, filia Sion, cum per speculum et in aenigmate vides Regem gloriae; sed quantum in carne ambulanti, et non secundum carnem militanti licuit videre.” VM c. 12, p. 441. 109. “Vidit enim S. Mariam Dominam nostram, vidit et salutavit. . . . Obtulerunt ei Sorores imaginem S. Mariae: manu avertit illam, convertens oculos ad visionem, quam vidit in spiritu; quasi diceret, Ego saluto S. Mariam, non in imagine, sed in veritate.” VM c. 26, p. 448. 110. “Ilud ab hominibus inter homines vivens: sed jam cum Angelis victura, manibus communicavit Angelicis. Ad vinem deducta vocem ultra non habuit, gestu corporis praesentiam Majestatis ostendit, inclinas reverenter, hians ore competenter, glutiens gutture decenter, sed et gestum bibentis imitans, et inclinas frequenter. Hoc viso miratae sunt sorores, et qui aderant; sed miraculum exhibens, animam mox solvit, communicans communicatoribus Sanctis in gaudio, et abiens cum eis ad rem sacramenti de sacramento, et de re fidei ad vultum speciei. Erat illic videre miraculum, signa non mortis in mortua; splendorem, sed vitae.” VM c. 28, p. 448. 111. “Ut ipsum, qui caritas est, videamus est, in illa bonitate electorum viventem et regnantem in secula seculorum.” VM c. 32, p. 449. 112. See, for instance, John of Salisbury and Peter the Chanter and his circle; Jaeger, “John of Salisbury,” 499–520; Baldwin, Masters, Princes, Merchants, 17–46; Wei, Intellectual Culture, 99; Ferruolo, Origins of the University, 222–78.

chapter 4 1. “Sacramentum altaris fundamentum est operis. Nam Christus utrumque sine quo non auri non argenti non lapidum preciosorum habet structura statum, sed casum. Paulus testis est. Virtutes per ista significans, laudabiles et gloriosas in Christo, labiles et ruinosas sine Christo. Super hec edificemus et nos dicturi de rebus que credi, et debent et possunt probari, tamen humana ratione non possunt etsi divina possunt, quas negare fas non est quam deus testis est, quibus uti utile et frui fructus vite est, quia in talibus vita spiritus est.” EB c. 1, fol. 49v. 2. The classic work on stories about the Eucharist is Browe, Eucharistischen Wunder. See also Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 86–91, and Justice, “Eucharistic Miracle and Eucharistic Doubt,” 307–32.

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3. Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 167; Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, 4; Rubin, Corpus Christi, 3–8. See also Bynum, “Blood of Christ,” 685–715. 4. I am grateful to Fiona Griffiths, who shared “Mass in Monastic Practice” before its publication. 5. For works that emphasize the Cistercian devotion to the Eucharist, see Dutton, “Eat, Drink and Be Merry,” 1–21; Smirnova, “Narrative Theology in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum,” 121–42. See also Bynum’s analysis of the complexity of Aelred of Rievaulx’s eucharistic imagery, in“Blood of Christ,” 685–88, and Leclercq, “The Imitation of Christ,” 36–54. 6. For Jerome’s commentary, see Commentariorum in Danielem. 7. Travis, “Daniel in the Lions’ Den,” 49–71. 8. See, for instance, Vescovi, “An Eschatological Mirror,” 64–65. See also Saxon, “Carolingian, Ottonian, and Romanesque Art,” 294, n. 144. Both Daniel and Habakkuk figure prominently in Lenten liturgies. Daniel, whose prophecies develop the eschatological themes of judgment and eternal reward or punishment, can symbolize Christ and his triumph over Satan and death. Habakkuk’s prophecies too suggest God’s destruction of the wicked and redemption of the faithful: not only is he read as foretelling Christ’s birth and his crucifixion between thieves, but he provides Paul with the phrase that “the righteous live by their faith” (Hab. 2:4). 9. See Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 109–11. For an image of Mary on a silver chalice from Cologne, with her hands in a similar gesture of prayer, see Clark, “Priesthood of the Virgin Mary,” 21–23. 10. Benedictine Rule c. 62. See also Griffiths, “Mass in Monastic Practice.” 11. Boynton, Shaping a Monastic Identity, 4. 12. Constable, Reformation, 200; Waddell, “Reform of the Liturgy,” 88–112. 13. Constable, Reformation, 202–4. 14. Lackner, “Liturgy of Early Cıˆteaux,” 28. 15. Les “Ecclesiastica officia” cisterciens c. 59, pp. 181–85. 16. Les “Ecclesiastica officia” cisterciens c. 58, p. 181. 17. Waddell, Cistercian Lay Brothers, IV, 62–63, 173–75. See also France, Separate but Equal, 94–95. 18. EB c. 4, fol. 50r–v, where Gotschalk, who is elsewhere described as a lay monk, had a vision in which he assisted at the altar. See also Les “Ecclesiastica officia” cisterciens c. 59, p. 182, in which a lay monk can assist a priest at private masses. 19. Waddell, Cistercian Lay Brothers, IV–V, 62–64, 174–77. 20. Waddell, Cistercian Lay Brothers, I, IX, 57–59, 68, 167, 182. See EM 4.13 for a story of a laybrother devoted to Mary who had learned “somehow” the salutation for the Virgin for the Feast of the Assumption, which he repeated all night since he was unable to attend the Vigils of the feast. 21. For studies that investigate the performance of the mass in other women’s communities, see Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales, 10, 192–93; Macy, Hidden History, 80–88; Simmons, “The Abbey Church at Fontevraud,” 103; Leclercq, “Eucharistic Celebrations Without Priests,” 160–68; Berger, Gender Differences, 65–93. 22. Williams, “Early Cistercian Nuns,” 183. 23. Thuringia sacra, no. 2, pp. 40–43, and Wagner, ed., Urkunden und Regestern, nos. 1, 6b, 12, 21, pp. 65, 77, 84, 94. See also Schlotheuber, “Freedom of Their Own Rule,” 113–15, 123.

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24. Williams, “Early Cistercian Nuns,” 320; Kleinjung, Frauenklo¨ster als Kommunikationszentren und soziale Ra¨ume, 158–60. 25. Abelard, Rule 75, in Luscombe, ed., Letter Collection, 436–39; Griffiths, “Men’s Duty to Provide for Women’s Needs,” 1–24; and Mews, “Heloise and Liturgical Experience,” 25–35. 26. Griffiths, Garden of Delights, 40–47. 27. Hotchin, “Female Religious Life,” 70. 28. Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales, 50–51. 29. Caroline Walker Bynum pioneered this interpretation in her Holy Feast and Holy Fast. See also Michel Lauwers, “Les femmes et l’eucharistie,” 466–76. 30. Leclercq, “Eucharistic Celebrations Without Priests,” 162–65; Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales, 182–94; her “Like the Sister of Aaron,” 247–74; and Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 142–53 for women’s embroidery as spiritual practice. 31. They were not alone in this. Peter the Venerable, in his treatise against Peter of Bruys, argued that humans needed visual signs to recall the event of the Passion. Thus Christ instituted the Eucharist to represent his sacrifice. Nonetheless, Peter argued that the sensible species and their transformation into the body and blood of Christ served as outward signs of humanity’s internal, spiritual union with God, but since this union could be perfected through faith and love, corporeal reception of the Eucharist was not essential; Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, 98. The “spiritual communion” described by Peter the Venerable and Baldwin of Ford differed from a thirteenth-century “oracular communion,” which is sometimes also called “spiritual communion.” See Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 4, 7, 13, 90. 32. William explored a middle ground between those who emphasized the necessity of the corporeal reception of the sacrament and those who stressed that only spiritual reception was essential. His argument that the accidents of the Eucharist exist independently of both the body of Christ and the bread and wine influenced Peter Lombard. Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, 96–97. 33. Both men dedicated their treatises to bishops, suggesting a continued Cistercian interest in encouraging the moral formation of the clergy. Isaac sent his composition to John, bishop of Poitiers (1162–1181) who, after his service as archbishop of Lyon from 1181 to 1193, retired to Clairvaux, and Baldwin addressed his to Bartholomew, bishop of Exeter (1161–1184). 34. For instance, Moses’ three altars in the desert tabernacle symbolized the three stages of the soul’s ascent toward God and the three offerings in the mass. At the first altar, the offering of bread and wine represented the offering of a contrite heart through penance; at the second altar, the offering of Christ’s body and blood corresponded with the offering of a pure heart through devotion and justice; and at the third altar, the reception of the sacrament symbolized a union with God through understanding and contemplation. See “Isaac of Stella’s Epistola de canone missae,” ed. and trans. Dietz, 265–308. 35. Macy, Theologies of the Eucharist, 99; Bell, “Baldwin of Ford,” 217–42. 36. Bell, “Baldwin of Ford,” 218. See also, Bell, “Certitudo Fidei,” 249–75. 37. Stiegman, “Three Theologians,” 101–5. 38. Bernard of Clairvaux, “In Cena Domini,” SBO 5.71. 39. Few of the stories in Gregory’s Dialogues concern the sacraments, but he concluded one story by exhorting, “We must immolate ourselves to God in contrition of heart whenever we offer the Mass,” (4.61.1). There is little discussion of the sacraments in the Gospel homilies either. In his twenty-second Homily on the Gospels he encouraged his audience not only to receive Christ’s blood but to imitate and meditate on his Passion. See Lake, “Hagiography and the Cult of Saints,” 232–5, and Straw, Gregory the Great, 140.

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40. Bernard of Clairvaux, Lenten Sermons 3.3, SBO 4.177, in Sermons on Conversion, trans. Saı¨d, 132. 41. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs 30.7, SBO 1.214–15. 42. “Quoties in commemorationem eius qui pro te passus est, huic facto eius pie ac fideliter fueris affectus, corpus eius manducas et sanguinem bibis.” William of St. Thierry, Epistola ad fratres de Monte Dei 119, in Opera, translated by Dutton, “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry,” 16. 43. Baldwin, De sacramento altaris 7; quoted in Bell, “Baldwin of Ford,” 227. 44. Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 39–59; Frith, Making Up the Mind, 163–83; Johnson, “Metaphor and Cognition,” 401–14. See now Engh and Turner, “Introduction,” 13–35. 45. Turner, Literary Mind, especially Chapters 5 and 6; Stockwell, “The Positioned Reader,” 269–70. Severi, in “Learning to Believe,” 30, remarks that representation of belief becomes a “space where imagination is inscribed.” 46. For the idea of seeing beyond, see Bynum, “Seeing and Seeing Beyond,” 208–40. 47. See Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity, 63–86, on imagistic modes of religiosity, in which sudden, dramatic, and often horrifying rituals create emotional responses and strong bonds among the participants and invoke particular kinds of memory. 48. Here, my interpretation of these stories differs from that of Steven Justice, “Eucharistic Miracle and Eucharistic Doubt,” 309–10, who both follows and critiques the usual position that, as stories about doubt, they express doubts about transubstantiation. 49. RB 42. “It would not be wholesome for weak minds to hear this part of the Scripture at that hour.” 50. See B. Newman, “What Did It Mean to Say ‘I Saw’?,” 1–43, for other examples of the relation between text and visionary experience. 51. PL 73: 301, where the story appears in the Vita sancti Basilii; see Browe, Eucharistischen Wunder, 191–92. 52. Verba Seniorum, PL 73: 979–80. The idea of the “horror cruoris” has its source in Ambrose; see Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 15, 88. 53. In the early thirteenth century, Jacques de Vitry retold the story of the monk in a much abbreviated form as part of his discussion of the Eucharist and acknowledged his source; Historia Occidentalis, ed. Hinnebusch, 206. 54. For a discussion of these stories, see Sinanoglou [Marcus], “The Christ Child as Sacrifice,” 491–509. 55. For the development of twelfth-century ritual murder accusations, see Langmuir, “Thomas Monmouth,” 209–36; Rubin, Gentile Tales, 27; and McCulloh, “Jewish Ritual Murder,” 689–740. 56. Aelred of Rievaulx, Sermo II: In Natali Domini, PL 195: 227. “In hoc praesepio in specie panis et vini est verum corpus et sanguis Christi.” See also Gregory the Great, XL Homiliarum in Evangelia, Homilia VIII in PL 76: 1104, where he equates the altar and the manger. 57. Bynum, “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion,” in Fragmentation and Redemption, 129–30. 58. Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 10. See also Biale, Blood and Belief, 80–122. 59. Engelhard here articulated an idea expressed by Ambrose in his De sacramentis 4.20, PL 16: 443. He explained that Christ’s blood in the sacrament was hidden because of a “horror

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cruoris.” For a position that the body and blood are concealed to exercise faith, see Bell, “Baldwin of Ford,” 221. 60. It is one of the few Engelhard stories without information about the protagonist or its transmission. 61. See the discussion of Peter Damian and the revelation to the monk of Evesham, in Bynum, Wonderful Blood, 175. 62. “Godescalchus dicebatur vidit aliquando in hora fractionis hostie salutaris sanctam mariam in altari considentem, et parvulum cultro aureo dividentem, sanguinem quoque illius ad singulas incisiones decurrentem in calicem. Vidit hoc et triste nil pertulit quia videre dignus fuit.” EB c. 4, fol. 50r–v. 63. Fulton [Brown], From Judgment to Passion, 425. See also Rubin, Mother of God, 243–55; Johnson, “Marian Devotion,” 392–93; and Graef, Mary, 178–208. 64. Fulton [Brown], From Judgment to Passion, 308–9, notes that, despite the tradition of Bernard of Clairvaux’s devotion to Mary, his focus is more on Christ and coming to Christ through Mary. She analyzes the writings of Rupert of Deutz, Philip of Harvengt, and William of Newburg, who describe Mary as sharing in the work of human redemption but still present her passivity. 65. For another story associated with the Purification, see Oppel, “Eine kleine Sammlung cisterciensischer Mirakel,” 23–24. 66. Shoor, “The Iconographic Development of the Presentation in the Temple,” 17–32, and Getty, Ms. Ludwig VII 1. 67. “Hodie placibilis et Deo placens hostia virgineis manibus offertur in templo. . . .” Sermo 2 In Purificatione S. Mariae 1, SBO 4.338. “Offer filium, Virgo sacrata, et benedictum fructum ventris tui Domino repraesenta. Offer ad nostram omnium reconciliationem hostiam sanctam, Deo placentem. Omnino acceptabit Deus Pater oblationem novam et pretiosissimam hostiam, de qua ipse ait: His est filius meus dilectus, in quo mihi bene complacui.” Sermo 3 In Purificatione S. Mariae 2, SBO 4.342. 68. “Veniet, quando non in templo offeretur, nec inter brachia Simeonis, sed extra civitatem inter brachia crucis.” Sermo 3 In Purificatione S. Mariae 2, SBO 4.342. 69. “Omnipotens sempiterne deus maiestatem tuam suppplices exoramus, ut sicut unigenitus filius tuus, hodierna die cum noste carnis substantia in templo est presentatus, ita nos facias purificatis tibi mentibus presentari.” I am very grateful to Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell for sharing his work on the liturgy of the Purification with me. See now his Primitive Cistercian Breviary, 450. 70. “Erudi domine quesumus domine plebem tuam, et que extrinsecus annua tribuis deuotione uenerari interius assequi gracie tue luce concede.” Material supplied by Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell. 71. “In quibus omnibus si quis forsitan proficere dissimulat, et proficisci de virtute in virtutem, noverit quisquis eiusmodi est, in statione, non in processione se esse, immo vero et in regressione, quoniam in via vitae non progredi regredi est.” Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo 2 In Purificatione S. Mariae 3, SBO 4.340. 72. “Sed quid nos, fratres, offerimus, aut quid retribuimus illi pro omnibus quae retribuit nobis? . . . Duo minuta habeo, Domine, corpus et animam dico; utinam haec tibi perfecte possim in sacrificium laudis offerre! . . . Fuit in ea oblatione Ioseph sponsus Matris Domini, cuius filius putabatur; fuit et ipsa virgo Mater, et puer Iesus qui offerebatur. Sit ergo et in oblatione nostra constantia virilis, sit contenentia carnis, sit conscientia humilis.” Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo 3 In Purificatione S. Mariae 3, SBO 4.343–44.

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73. “Memoriam eius infra faciam plenius, mores quoque et vitam atque obitum eius spondeo me picturum prout brevitas sinit, non ut meritum eius exposcit.” EB c. 5, fol. 50v. 74. EB c. 7, fol. 52v. 75. “Multa pertulit antequam veniret ad perfectum, hostem manifeste persequentem et male sibi nunc fugam, nunc suspensionem, nunc submersionem, nunc quamlibet interfectionem importune suggerentem.” EB c. 10, fols. 54v–55r. See Chapter 5. 76. “A die illa et deinceps ita ita fervebat in spiritu, ut igni posset equari et inter ceteros homines angelis estimari.” EB c. 10, fol. 55r. See also McGuire, “Rebirth and Responsibility,” 148–58. 77. Engelhard’s description invokes the Marian statues that opened to display the child in her womb. These emerge toward the end of the thirteenth century. See Gertsman, Worlds Within, 2. 78. In DM 9.41, Caesarius of Heisterbach tells a story that modifies the messages in Engelhard’s accounts of Gotschalk. He describes a vision in which one of the brothers saw Jesus suffering on the Cross. The blood from his wounds dripped into the chalice. The brother did not think himself worthy to communicate. Mary then appeared to him and scolded him for his presumption that he would ever think himself worthy. 79. Clark, “Priesthood of the Virgin Mary,” 5–24. These visions are copied into the Collectaneum 1.8, p. 31. 80. “Expavi fateor, recessit a me consilium.” EB c. 5, fol. 51r. 81. “Absit inquit a me reportare, quod vix portatum est huc, nam ego potius portatus sum ab illo, non enim fui mecum sed quasi per aera, nunc volando nunc ambulando ferebar, cito futurus sine sensu nisi deposuero sarcinam.” EBc. 5, fol. 51r. 82. “Et reponentes in crastinum sicque fuit ut mos est a sacerdote perceptum.” EB c. 5, fol. 51r. 83. “A grege dei heu segregatus ipse.” EB c. 5, fol. 50v. 84. Engelhard may have developed ways for women and lay monks to find sacramental possibilities in their lives, but his concern about this lay woman handling the host shows that he did not question a priestly monopoly of the mass itself. 85. Engelhard’s story parallels the opusculum of Herman of Cologne that details Herman’s conversion from Judaism to Christianity. It is in fact quite possible that the tale that Engelhard heard as a young man was a story about Herman. Both describe the process of learning to read and interpret as a Christian rather than as a Jew, although Herman’s account is about learning to interpret a dream, while Engelhard’s is about learning to interpret a vision of the Eucharist. For Herman’s text, see Hermannus quondam Judeaus, Opusculum de conversione sua. For an analysis of Hermann’s Opusculum, see Schmitt, Conversion of Herman the Jew; Kruger, Dreaming, 154–65; Morrison, Conversion and Text, 39–75. For later versions of Engelhard’s tale, see Rubin, Gentile Tales, 25, where she cites Henmannus Bononiensis and his story in the Viaticum narrationum concerning a Jew of Cologne. 86. “Et ecce puer unus et niveus, puer ille nec alius quam voce didicerat sui vatis, puer qui natus est nobis filius qui datus est nobis.” EB c. 6, fol. 51r. 87. “Testificans qui illuminat omnem hominem venientem in hoc mundum. Nam splendor ille paterne glorie pro voce fuit patris dicentis ad se, filius meus es tu ego hodie genui te.” EB c. 6, fol. 51v. Engelhard quotes Psalms 2:7, Heb. 1:5, and Acts 13:33. 88. “Ut lateret sub modio sed noluit ille, malens poni super candelabrum ut luceret omnibus qui sunt in domo.” EB c. 6, fol. 51v; quoting Matt. 5:15; Luke 11:33, Mark 4:21.

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89. “Cogitansque quid egerit plus expavit, sed timore mutato, timens nunc a facie domini qui prius a facie inimici.” EB c. 6, fol. 51v (corrected from Poznan 173, f. 45v). 90. “Veniunt inveniunt splendorem in loco et lucernam mundi. Convenit clerus et populus ad miraculum invitatus ad devotionem spontaneus. Tollitur corpus ihsu de terra, fidelibus ea specie qua tractatur in ecclesia, ceterum iudeo in specie infantis ut anta. Radius tamen ille celestis apparuit omnibus gaudentibus flentibusque pre gaudio, et portantibus illud ad ecclesiam cum iubilo cordis et cantico laudis. Confunditur iudaica fraus, fides Christiana gloriatur. Laudatur ab omnibus Christus, adicit ipse laudi sue, ascendens in celum cunctis videntibus. Siquidem in illo radio splendoris sui e manibus sacerdotis elapsus, radium ipsum traxit secum et in oculis omnis ecclesie nitebatur in celum, ita ut neminem hoc lateret assistentium. Tunc personat gratiarum actio et vox laudis quod laudatum vel cantatum est prius, parum fuit ex tunc ad vocem letantium lacrimantium atque laudantium terra personuit. Gaudium enim factum est quasi exercitus dei et ingens ex hoc, confirmatio fidei. Denique iudeus ille et nonnulli suorum baptizati sunt, facti deinceps filii abrahe per fidem sicut fuere per carnem.” EB c. 6, fols. 51v–52r (corrected from Poznan 173, fol. 45v). 91. See Rubin, Gentile Tales, 40, and Langmuir, “The Tortures of the Body of Christ,” 287–309. 92. Cf. Rom. 9:8, Gal. 3:26. For analysis of Christian depicitions of Jewish sight, see Lipton, Dark Mirror, 79–128. 93. Stephen Justice suggests the physical impossibilities and unstated empirical descriptions in these stories to argue that their purpose was to encourage people to think, even if such thoughts might engender skepticism. But see C. McGinn, Mindsight, 48–55, for discussions of imaginative seeing. 94. Hyams, “Faith, Fealty and Jewish ‘infideles,’ ” 129–32, 145–47, for an example of a way Jewish-Christian relations in York in 1190 helped define the community of the fideles. 95. “Accipit ipse quod et ceteri, sed non ut ceteri. . . . Pellem ovis lupus induerat, ovem se finxerat, sumens cum illis cibum vite sed non ad vitam quia sine fide.” EB c. 6, fol. 51r–v. 96. The Collectaneum contains forty-seven stories that describe visions and miracles associated with consecration and reception of the host; twelve concern Cistercian monks. The treatises include Isaac of Stella’s treatise on the mass as well as a composite treatise, De actione missae, that combined a ninth-century work by Florus of Lyon with passages from Hugh of St. Victor and Paschasius Radbertus; Collectaneum, lxv. 97. Twenty-six of the stories in Herbert of Clairvaux’s Liber miraculorum concern the Eucharist; twelve are about Cistercians. 98. In the Exordium magnum, there are thirty-one Eucharistic stories. Only six have nonCistercian protagonists. For Conrad’s reliance on Herbert, see McGuire, “Structure and Consciousness in the Exordium magum cisterciense,” 33–90. 99. For copies of Lombard’s Sentences in twelfth-century monastic libraries, see Colish, Peter Lombard I, 25; Griffiths, Garden of Delights, 74–75; and Mews, “Monastic Educational Culture,” 182–97. 100. Collectaneum 2.17; see also LM 90 (3.25). 101. Collectaneum 2.8, 2.21 (also Vita prima 1.2). Stories also suggest that it was possible for monks to hide the fact that they had not taken communion. Collectaneum 4.5 tells of a novice whom Bernard of Clairvaux had forbidden to communicate at Easter; he died soon after, and monks did not give him the viaticum, assuming he had recently communicated. 102. LM 21 (1.21); Collectaneum 2.9; EM 5.14. 103. LM 22 (1.22); EM 4.3.

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104. Collectaneum 2.24; Turbach 2683. 105. For devotion to John the Baptist, see EM 3.32, LM 43 (2.10); for St Malachai, see EM 3.16, LM 4 (1.4); for tears, see the account of Peter of Toulouse [LM 3 (1.3); Collectaneum 2.12; EM 3.15] and Gerard of Farfa [LM 51 (2.29), EM 3.17]. For other visions as a reward for holiness, see DM 9.30 and the stories in the Collectaneum about Hamo of Savigny (2.13, 2.14). Collectaneum 2.13 describes a vision in which Hamo saw Christ and the hand of God and heard a voice, “like a titulus,” saying “This is the son of God, who appears to you for your consolation,” creating an interesting juxtaposition of a story of a vision and pictorial depictions. 106. DM 9.17. 107. DM 9.28, 9.29. Similarly, a recluse, Uda, saw a fiery ball over the head of Ulrich of Villers while he celebrated mass; DM 9.31. See also Collectaneum 4.61. 108. Collectaneum 2.21 and 2.7; LM 81 (3.13). 109. EM 4.2; LM 84 (3.16). 110. DM 9.42, LM 92 (3.27), and DM 9.63. Not all Cistercians repented, however. A laybrother who could not close his mouth to chew the viaticum was discovered after his death to be carrying money. DM 9.64. 111. “Et licet absens esset corpore, spiritu tamen praesens fuit, communicans spiritualiter, et si non sacramentaliter.” DM 9.45. See also DM 9.37. 112. EM 2.30. 113. EM 3.20; EM 3.15. 114. DM 9.35–37. 115. For the story of the bees, initially told by Peter the Venerable in his De miraculis (PL 189: 851), see DM 9.8, alternative versions in the Collectaneum 2.11, and LM 95 (3.30). By the later Middle Ages, such accusatory stories often intersect with stories of Jewish host desecration; Rubin, Gentile Tales, 40, and Langmuir “The Tortures of the Body of Christ,” 287–309. 116. For stories criticizing priests for sexual sins, see Collectaneum 2.3, 2.6; DM 9.3, 9.6. For other less-specified sins, see LM 19–20 (1.19–20); Collectaneum 2.15, 2.25; DM 9.57, 9.59. 117. LM 19 (1.19); Collectaneum 2.15; EM 4.4; DM 9.57; see also Turbach 1033. In “Eucharistic Miracle and Doubt,” 313, Steve Justice calls this story “epistemological slapstick.” But this is not a story about doubt. 118. DM 9.54; see also LM 88 (3.23) about a priest who sacrificed unworthily and the bread and wine became invisible. 119. EM 6.2; Collectaneum 2.4, for the spider; LM 11 (1.11); EM 2.1 for lack of water and for Bernard of Clairvaux’s assurance these monk-priests will still be saved. See also Bernard’s letter 69 (James no. 72) to Guy of Trois-Fountains comforting him when he found that there was no wine in his chalice. 120. DM 9.14–15, 22–23, 27, 55, 65. 121. DM 9.31, 9.33–36, 9.39–40, 9.46–47. 122. Bynum, “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion,” in Fragmentation and Redemption, 124. See also Coakley, Women, Men, and Spiritual Power, 2–3. 123. Roisin, L’hagiographie cistercienne, 178–84. 124. “Denique carnem illam Agni Paschalis, Agni peccata mundi tollentis, in remissionem peccatorum suorum frequenter accepit, edens illum potius mente quam dente, et parans se illi templum mundum, tam corde quam corpore.” VM c. 2, 437. 125. “Christum habuit, gregem secum pascentem pane illo, qui descendit de coelo, et dat vitam mundo.” VM c. 9, 439. 126. VM c. 17, 433.

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127. VM c. 21, 445. 128. “Nunc vetulus scribo oblivione indignum arbitrans laudis Christi preconium, quod infide temptatis auferret ambiguum incredulis inferret metum, negligentium argueret tedium, studium acueret diligentium, postremo perfectionis amore ferventibus augebit incentivum.” EB c. 6, fol. 52r. 129. “Salvator corporis sui veritatem in hoc sacramento ut praefatus sum bonis sacerdotibus ostendere dignatur ut consolentur; in fide nutantibus ut erigantur; male viventibus ut terreantur.” DM 9.3.

chapter 5 1. DM 7.64. See also Solway, “A Numismatic Source,” 359–68. 2. Collectaneum 4.57; EM 4.30. 3. “Invenit homines nec unius moris universos ridentes, irascentes, iocantes, et alia que sunt hominum facientes.” EB c. 21, fol. 66r. 4. “Cernit etiam homines cuiusque professionis et ordinis, monachos, canonicos, clericos, et laicos, singulos in formas suas spiritesque distinctos, letos quidem ante deum sed ordine confuso permixtos sibi, et sicut in nundinis gradu instabiles et incertos locis ferri, et esse modo hic, modo ibi. Levat oculos ad dexteram dei et ecce illic populus multus agens in silentio et quiete, stans cum disciplina et laudans deum et exultationes dei in gutture eorum. Super omnes alios mirabatur illos exultantes in gloria, gratos vultu, habitu splendidos, rasos de novo caput et in forma nostri vestitos ac velut ex aere sereno cucullato.” EB c. 21, fol. 66v. 5. Engelhard’s paraphrase of 1 Corinthians at the beginning of his book of exempla also downplays eschatological issues and emphasizes epistemological questions instead. See Chapter 3. 6. See Chapter 2. See also EB c. 19, fol. 63v, “Ex his ordo noster est iam in captura non minimus.” 7. See Eliade, Sacred and the Profane, and the critiques provided by Smith in Map Is Not Territory, 91–103, and To Take Place, 2–13. For more general studies of space, see Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” 22–27; Lefebvre, La production de l’espace; de Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 91–130; and the works by Smith, cited above. For recent work in religious studies that draws on Arjun Appadurai’s ideas of “scapes” and “flows,” see Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling, 60–62, and Knott, Location of Religion, 111–12. For applications of these ideas to medieval studies, see Cassidy-Welch, “Space and Place in Medieval Contexts,” 1–12. 8. See Guibert of Nogent’s Memoirs in Monk’s Confessions, trans. Archambault, for an example of the mix of family expectations and individual choice at the end of the eleventh century. 9. See especially Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, 75–88; Vernarde, Women’s Monasticism and Medieval Society, 89–133. 10. Evagrius of Pontus, On Prayer 81, in Evagrius, trans. Sinkewicz, 201–2. See John Cassian, De institutis 3.3. The numerous monastic visions in which angels joined the monks’ daily chant were grounded in Benedict’s reminder to his monks that while at prayer, they were especially in the sight of God and the angels; RB c. 7, c. 19. 11. Bruce, Silence and Sign Language, 21–23. 12. See, among others, Geary, Furta Sacra, 58–62; Head, Hagiography and the Cult of Saints, 135–201; Remensynder, Remembering Kings Past, 42–89; Little, Benedictine Maledictions, 17–30, 131–143. Even monasteries such as Marmoutier and Cluny, whose patron saints were not

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buried in their compounds, articulated their connections to them and proclaimed their ability to care for Christian society and its dead through the special quality of their prayers and their performance of commemoratory prayers and masses. See Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin, especially 97–106, and Rosenwein, Head, and Farmer, “Monks and Their Enemies,” 764–96. Cluny did have an imago Petri that contained relics, including part of Peter’s body; Rosenwein, To Be the Neighbor of St. Peter, 5. 13. Hahn, Reliquary Effect, 35–48. See also Abou-El-Haj, Medieval Cult of Saints, 7–32. 14. As Jonathan Z. Smith reminds us in To Take Place, 96–117, sacred space is not an ontological fact but rather a social and textual construction, formed out of the interplay of ritual and narrative. 15. See Waddell, “Early Cistercian Experience of Liturgy,” 87, and Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 34–35; Les “Ecclesiastica officia” cisterciens, c. 50–52; and Canivez, Statuta, 1:19, 47, 68. 16. Even the names of many Francophone Cistercian monasteries reflect this. While these Cistercians, even more than many of their contemporaries, picked names that described the beauty and paradisiacal quality of their surroundings, the Cistercians’ writing about this beauty connected it to the spiritual qualities of the men who had created it. As Guerric, the abbot of Igny, told his monks, their spiritual efforts would make “the desert like a paradise of delights and the solitude like a garden of the Lord,” but their sinfulness would transform this garden back into a “howling waste of the wilderness.” Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 95. 17. William of St. Thierry, Vita Prima 3–4; PL 185: 237–38; and Bredero, Bernard of Clairvaux, 201–12. 18. Bernard of Clairvaux Letter 1; SBO 7.1–11 (James no. 1). 19. Stock, Implications of Literacy, 430–54. See also Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux, 135–38, and Engh, Gendered Identities. 20. EM 2.20. See also Harrison, “If One Member Glories,” 25–35. 21. See especially McGuire’s analysis of the portrayal of Bernard in Cistercian exempla in Difficult Saint. For stories in which Bernard and Malachai appear together, see LM 4 (1.4), 27 (1.28); EM 3.16, 4.22. 22. Collectaneum, prologue. 23. Jacques Le Goff and others have attributed to the Cistercians an important role in the development of the idea of purgatory, but the twelfth-century Cistercians’ stories seldom discuss a place of purgation. Collectaneum 2.26 offers one account of a monk visiting a purgatory, but in keeping with the Cistercians’ emphasis on their special penitential holiness, this purgatory is a gentle place reserved specifically for Cistercians who had not made enough satisfaction for their sins before their deaths. Its inhabitants were assisted not by masses designated specifically for them but also by the monks’ collective prayers. See McGuire, “Purgatory,” 61–84, and Le Goff, Birth of Purgatory, 160–63, 193–200, 300–306. More common were Cistercian retellings of stories of otherworldly journeys, including Bede’s account of the vision of Drythelm, the more contemporary vision of Tnugdal, or the account of St. Patrick’s Purgatory, all of which provided cautionary tales of infernal and purgatorial realms without denigrating Cistercian sanctity. 24. Mula, “Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Cistercian Exempla Collections,” 903–12. 25. EM 4.19; see also LM 28 (1.29). 26. Astell, Eating Beauty, 62–98; Harrison, “The Nuns of Helfta,” 297–310. 27. “Sagena illa ewangelica missa in mare ex omni genere piscium congregat ad fidem et in illa queque religio capturas suas agit et trahit ad conversationem. Ex his ordo noster est iam in captura non minimus, multos vendicans sibi, lia factus ex rachel, fecundus in partu, in actu

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multiplex, et multiplicatus super numerum. Arduus est ad propositum, magus ad meritum, violentus ad regnum, fidelis ad premium.” EB c. 19, fol. 63v. 28. “Cum in ceteris ordinibus inveniantur plura viciorum, pauciora virtutis.” EB c. 20, fol. 66r. 29. “Sub his omnibus etiam apud nos latet angius in herba, cuius tamen eve filii caput conterunt, sicubi ad nocendum exerit illud. . . . Miretur aut calumpnietur inde qui velit, sed respondeat sibi quod inter filios dei etiam sathan fuerit, quod et paradysus serpente non caruit, quod et iudas petri coapostolus fuit, quod cum tritico lolium usque ad messem crescere, paterfamilias voluit quod ad extremum sagena evangelii pisces suos non in mari sed in litore discrevit bonosque a malis mediantibus angelis segregavit.” EB c. 19, fols. 63v–64v. 30. For criticisms, see Rupert of Deutz, Super quodam capitula regulae divi Benedicti abbatis 3.13–14, PL 170: 517–18, and Peter the Venerable, Letter 28, ed. Giles Constable, 1.53–56. 31. EM 2.30, 3.10, 4.26; also Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 1, SBO 7.1–11 (James, no. 1). 32. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermones de diversis 37: In labore messis 3.1, SBO 5.222–23. 33. Bernard of Clairvaux, In feria IV hebdomadae sanctae, Sermo de passione Domini 12, SBO 5.65. Bernard was not alone among Cistercian writers in his scorn of necessary labor; the English abbot Aelred of Rievalux also distinguished the voluntary work of monks from the “curse” of the peasants. Aelred of Rievaulx, Speculum caritatis 2, in Aelredi Rievallensis Opera omnia, 83. See also Guerric of Igny, De resurrectione Domini, sermo tertius 4 in Sermons, 254, and Isaac of Stella, Sermo L in Nativitate Petri et Pauli, PL 194: 1861. 34. William of St. Thierry, Vita Prima 4.24, PL 185: 240. 35. The story is unusual not only in its depiction of monastic labor but also in that it is one of the few stories from the Clairvaux collections in which Mary is a central figure. For a longer analysis of the Cistercian’s idea of work, see my “Labor,” 111–16. 36. Collectaneum 90. 37. LM 1 (1.1). 38. EM 3.13. 39. DM 1.17. 40. It also again raises questions of transmission, for in introducing his tale Engelhard noted that the story came from France, brought to Langheim by the monk Bezelin. It is unclear whether Engelhard himself modified the Clairvaux versions or whether the story changed through a process of oral retelling as it gradually moved east. 41. “Dixitque, visitavi hodie monachos meos in agro, sudorem eorum collegi michi in vase isto et hic odor opitmus coram me et filio meo, dignus utique et renumerandus optimo premio.” EB c. 14, fol. 59r. 42. DM 1.17. 43. “Tum ille. O pia domina quid tibi tanti est labor noster qui fit non tam devotione voluntatis quam necessitate inopie? At illa. Quid tu ait non audisti quia voluptas habet penam, et necessitas parit coronam? Et sic coronam parit necessitas sed iam partam accipit voluntas. Sive ego necessitate sive voluntate quid agitis meum est, omnia vestra michi vendico, ego suscipio, ego renumero. His dictis disparverant ille et ille obdormivit suaviter utique sic animatus in spe, sic confortatus in fide, voluntarius in labore. Mane facto refert letus et compunctus abbati abbas conventui. Letati sunt omnes, credunt omnes, et pro gravitate persone nemo dubitat. Accenduntur animi omnium, singuli fervent ad opus, laborantes et sudantes in tantum, ut si maria demum ad esset posset implere vas suum.” EB c. 14, fol. 59r–v. See also Poznan´ 173, fol. 55v, and Zwettl 13, fol. 230rb, which also use “voluptas,” but Munich BSB Clm 13097, fol. 146, which uses “voluntas.”

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Notes to Pages 142–145

44. In fact, Engelhard is unusual in recounting tales about the rural laity, depicting not only a shepherd with the Eucharist, but a female weaver, a local miller, and a servant from the monastery of Ebrach. 45. These scholastics include Jacques de Vitry and Humbert of Romans. See Farmer, Surviving Poverty, 49, and Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant, 33. 46. The Benedictine Rule (7.33) follows the Rule of the Master in presenting the phrases as scriptural, when it instead came from an ancient proverb (act. Anas. 17). Kardong, Benedict’s Rule, 146. 47. See, for instance, Dijon, BM ms. 114, fol. 163, and the Pontigny commentary on the Rule, in Sonntag, ed., Sermones in Regulam s. Benedicti, 143. 48. In the Rule, the passage emphasizes the importance of obedience, in comparison to acting according to one’s own will and desires. Bernard of Clairvaux rewrote Benedict’s steps of humility to describe how a monk might choose to move away from God and toward pride and damnation, while William of St Thierry emphasized that opening oneself to grace was also a choice. See also Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 113 (James 116), in which Bernard uses “libertas” to refer to a free choice. He wrote to the virgin Sophia, “Laudo factam de necessitate virtutem, sed plus illam quam eligit libertas, non indicit necessitas.” SBO 7.288. 49. “Sic sic ludere solet dulcis Maria cum pueris suis, sic in visu ostendit se illis donum pacis et gratie afferens illis.” EB c. 14, fol. 59v. 50. “Evigilans et cogitans quid vidisset altam fit ex altera, vultum induens gravitatis, levitatis habens nichil, maturos gestus, rarum verumque sermonem, mores honestatis, vitam spiritalem, et longe aliam mentem quam prius habuerit.” EB c. 11, fols. 55v–56r. 51. “Sedit in medio earum una sole preclarior ornata omni lapide precioso, coronam habens in capite de gemmis fulgentibus, ita ut sola mundum suo posset lumine illustrare.” EB c. 11, fol. 56r. 52. “Fac ergo mater ut debes, fac sicut mater et filie tue curam habe. Que ad seculum parasti michi mitte in celum ut fruar ibi. Da sancte marie pannos hos ut in purpuram sericumque vertantur michi inter choros illos virgineos.” EB c. 11, fol. 56r. 53. See also the story of the shepherd and the Eucharist, discussed in the previous chapter. 54. “Telam ei longam texuerat ad mundum muliebrem mulier secularis, sed cito a texente vita eius succisa est ut de manu domini stolam reciperet inmortalitatis.” EB c. 11, fol. 55v. 55. RB, c. 11, c. 13; Harper, Forms and Orders, 257, notes that it was said during Lauds on Tuesdays. 56. EB c. 25, fol. 69r–v, tells the story of a monk whose mother gave the monastery some cloth. 57. “Sancta mechthildis ut predictum est solita fuit scribere ne panem ociosa comederet, et hoc maxime in quo domino magis placere se crederet. Missalibus et psalteriis scribendis frequenter incubuit quia in his ambiciosius divinitati serviri putavit immo speravit, nec eam spes confudit.” Poznan´ 156, fol. 117r–v. Might “serving God” mean that she prayed as she copied? She could have sung the psalms as she copied them, but repeating the words of the missal would have been a different matter, for she was not a priest. 58. “O inquit si mitteret michi deus nuncium suum qui michi pennam temperaret, nam difficultatem hanc raro passa sum et nunc magis molestum. Statim ut dixit affuit iuvenis pulcher aspectu, nitidus habitu, dulcis affatu. Quid ait pateris O karissima? Et illa. Tempus inutiliter transigo, nichil operor, et pennam temperare nescio.” Poznan´ 156, fol. 117v. 59. “Hoc postmodum miraculi habuit in scribendo ut nemo tam bene, nemo tam cito, nemo expeditus, nemo rectius scriberet, nec eam similitudine manus imitari posset. Temperata

Notes to Pages 145–150

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ut dictum est perma, disparvuit temperator, et apparvit in opere quis fuerit operator.” Poznan´ 156, fol. 117v. 60. For a discussion of how women’s production of liturgical textiles connected them to the mass, see Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales, 182–94, and Miller, Clothing the Clergy, 142–53. 61. Karras, “This Skill in a Woman,” 89–104. 62. Herman of Tournai, De miraculis sanctae Mariae Laudunensis, PL 156: 1001–2; Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, 129–46. 63. Collectaneum 4.7, EM 2.11 and 2.3. 64. “Eat et redeat qui vult, ego cum remanentibus remanebo et cum duobus tercius, cum tribus quartus hic ero.” EB c. 21, fol. 66v. 65. EM 5.20. 66. “Iuvenis illic maturis valde moribus fuit, cui id maxime studii numquam tacere in choro, cantare iugiter, nichil negligere quod divino conveniret officio.” EB c. 15, fol. 59v. 67. “Cibum fastidiens et esuriens cantum, immo illum qui in cantu est iubilum.” EB c. 15, fol. 59v. 68. “Vidit hoc scrutans corda et renes deus, misertus est nec patitur frustra id fieri, nec omnino celari.” EB c. 15, fol. 59v. 69. “Ceterum illis abeuntibus ad eum qui miserat, miserabilis ille recidivo languore defecit, hinc certe admonitus quod et prius non sua sed illorum virtute quid potuit. Vidit hoc in spiritu spiritalis ille miratus et miseratus est, et vehementer inde compunctus. Requisitus postea quid novi accidisset cur publice sic plorasset rem ut viderat indicavit, tam probatus tam perfectus ipse ut de verbo eius nemo dubitaverit. Edificati sunt audientes, letati presentes, perduxit fama leticiam et ad absentes.” EB c. 15, fol. 60r. 70. “Letemur et nos in verbo provocemur exemplo, cantemus deo et laboremus pro deo, actum comitetur affectus quia nec sudor in vacuum defluit sed collectus et conditus est in olfactoriolo marie, nec verba transeunt in inane, mediantibus angelis scripta in libro vite et vitam impetrantia cantantibus ea cum fide.” EB c. 15, fol. 60r. 71. “Parvum immo nullum est hoc ordinis et religionis nostre preconium ac pro minimo filiis ordinis quorum gloria tota hec est testimonium consciencie sue.” EB c. 21, fol. 66v. 72. Schmitt, Ghosts, 1–7. 73. See Sosnowski, Katalog, 1.231, where the first unit of Poznan´ 156 (fols. 1–120) is described as a “Liber beate Mariae virginis.” 74. See, for instance, Rubin, Mother of God, 150. 75. Fulton [Brown], From Judgment to Passion, 308. Stories in the small collection of tales from Aldersbach also give Mary a voice. See Oppel, “Eine kleine Sammlung cisterciensischer Mirakel,” 12–18, 23–24. 76. See below. 77. See also McGuire, who suggests that the late twelfth century was a period of transition for the Cistercians’ cult of Mary; “A Lost Clairvaux Collection Found,” 26–62. See also Burton, Foundation History, xxxv–vi, in which she describes Mary becoming active in Cistercian affairs in the late twelfth century. 78. As Engelhard described, “he who could have been corrected by the rod instead, against custom, attacked with a stick [et qui virga potuerat emendari, iam baculum insolens factus incurrit]” EB c. 16, fol. 60r. 79. “Inobedientia tua fortes illos hic contra te fecit, nam nichil auderent, nichil possent si obedientia te protegeret. Maria sum ego, perditionem tua nolo, resipisce te moneo.” EB c. 16, fol. 60v.

250

Notes to Pages 151–154

80. “Quid miser cogitas, quid stulta versas in animo, fugam meditando, salutem fugiendo? Amas mulierem, me potius ama, nam melior ego quam illa atque utilior tibi filiorum causa discedis. Si attenderes unum hii tibi, non attenderes eos. Nam illos acquirendo plurimum glorie perdidisti. Delectaris esse cum illis, iam veni mecum et ostendam eos tibi.” EB c. 8, fol. 52v. 81. “Capit monachum manu, fortiter tenet, trahensque foras en inquit mulier et filii tui.” EB c. 8, fols. 52v–53r. 82. Bernard of Clairvaux, Lenten Sermons 3, SBO 4.175–82, in Sermons on Conversion, trans. Saı¨d, 129–34. 83. “Laqueo uno contrito, nectit alios, multiplicat pedicas, mulieris amorem proponens, affectum pignerum plures quam posset unquam habere delicias.” EB c. 8, fol. 52v. 84. EM 5.13. 85. “Et arguens eos domina nostra que est ait ista presumptio quod exhonoratis ecclesiam meam, quod viam fecistis vobis per eam et michi ac filio meo irrogastis contumeliam? Quid quod et clericum meum rapuistis? Seduxistis eum ut peccaret et ob hoc traditus est sathane in interitum carnis, non ut spiritui dominemini, sed ut ille salvus sit in die domini. At vos totum pro parte vendicastis, ideoque pro rapina indebita, debitam etiam iure amittetis. Iam non ultra feratis eum, sed in his tectis suaviter et caute deponite illum.” EB c. 17, fol. 62r. 86. “Fortis tamen in bello factus non est quod virile nil et dignum tanto beneficio gesserit. Nam teste preposito suo, levis et remissus citra perfectum remansit.” EB c. 17, fol. 62r. 87. “Quod denuo gratia dei et marie suffragio ad vitam rediit, dure correptus, periculose raptus, et clementer exceptus.” EB c. 17, fol. 62r. 88. There are more conventional stories of Mary in the Poznan´ manuscripts, among the tales that follow Engelhard’s collection for the nuns. It is likely that these stories are also Engelhard’s as they include some that he had embedded in his letters to Erbo, but it is also possible that someone else added them later. Both show Mary’s care for those who were devoted to her. One is a more optimistic version of the monk who was devoted to the office. A monk who was ill realized that his brothers had not said the sequence for Mary during vespers, but he was too weak to offer the prayers. He nonetheless said the Ave Maria, and while doing so, he saw a vision of Mary with her son on her lap. Every time he faltered the child blessed him, and his strength was renewed. “De quodam monacho de campo.” Poznan´ 156, fols. 89r–92v. See a similar but not identical story in Caesarius of Heisterbach, Fragmente der Libri VIII Miraculorum 3.20. In the other story, a monk watched a brother named Walter, who was known to be especially devoted to Mary, praying to Mary while raised in the air above the paving stones of the church. “De Waltero sancte monacho.” Poznan´ 156, fol. 92v. In neither of these stories does Mary speak. 89. See the story of the infirmarian, above, and Engelhard’s account of the revival of Simon of Sorø, in Chapter 3. The account of Mechthild’s death in Engelhard’s vita is the exception that nonetheless proves the general rule. Engelhard’s purpose in the vita was to depict Mechthild’s sanctity rather than to teach an audience of nuns and monks, and so, in this case, he attempted to describe saintly apparitions at her bedside as she died. He suggested both that Mechthild saw Mary and that she received communion from the Lord along with the saints in heaven. But, as we have discussed in Chapter 2, Engelhard came to these conclusions by observing earthly signs which he had to interpret. No one other than Mechthild saw these apparitions, and she never told anyone else about them. 90. Paxton, Christianizing Death, 201–9; Paxton, “Death by Customary,” 297–318; and Boynton, Shaping a Monastic Identity, 135–43.

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91. Les “Ecclesiastica officia” cisterciens, c. 94–98. But see the next chapter, on Engelhard’s lack of interest even in last rites. 92. Collectaneum 1.5; LM 55 (2.33); EM 4.35. For others, see LM 14 (1.14), 18 (1.18); EM 4.23 for laybrothers; for monks, LM 29 (1.30), 39 (2.6), 50 (2.28), 51 (2.29), 55 (2.33), 60 (2.38); EM 3.17, 3.32–34. 93. LM 10 (1.10), 77 (3.8). See also 78 (3.10). 94. See, among others, Collectaneum 4.1, 4.51, 4.56; EM 2.2, 2.30, 5.4, 5.7. For stories of laymen, see EM 2.33, 3.27. 95. LM 48 (2.27) and EM 2.33, in which the knight Balduin of Guiza converts, dies, and appears to Peter of Igny seeking prayers. See also LM 42 (2.9); Collectaneum 3.5, 3.9, 4.3, 4.4; EM 2.2, 5.7. 96. Chapters 10, 12, and 13 describe monks who died in pairs. The stories of Joseph and the abbot Peter of Clairvaux (c. 32 and 34) describe monks who die alone. 97. “Hunc ego cum nostro godescalco de quo predixi pro simili exitu comparem, dum iste moriens sine monacho non ivit ad deum, cum esset conversus, et monachus ille cum fratre secum moriente vultui maiestatis fuisset presentatus.” EB c. 12, fol. 57r. 98. EB c. 10, fols. 54v–55v. Engelhard told multiple stories about Gotschalk. See Chapter 4. 99. “Hunc dum primo introitu vellent monachum facere, abnuit servus inquiens monachorum ero et illis circa divina occupatis atque altario servientibus ego pastor pecorum ero. . . . Tum tanto eius gaudio prior congaudens atque urbane alludens, quo tu ait vir nobilis sine capellano abis? Palatium seculi olim solus non adisses, et palacium celi solus adibis? Absit inquit. Presbiter ille mecum ibit, videte ut modo paratus sit. Cucurrerunt et ille iam formabatur ad mortem. Fecerunt et in illo similia, vixque completis animas ambo pariter atque hylariter reddiderunt, sicque ad deum sancti merito, felices premio perrexerunt.” EB c. 12, fols. 56v–57r. 100. “Ardebant et lucebant, alii quoque accensi ab eis, edificati et informati forma sanctitatis. Dilecti ab omnibus omnes dilexerunt, subditi magistris, equalibus benigni, omnibus omnia facti, et tamquam vasa perdita ipsi sibi.” EB c. 13, fol. 57v. 101. “Dolet quisque in illis perire sibi aliquid, pater affectum subsidium, omnes simul quod prodesset omnibus sanctitatis exemplum. . . . Abbas vir fidelis et prudens ac fiducie dives in deum, meritis illorum sua conpensans, nec obedientie quid impossibile iudicans, iubet illos non alibi quam in celum ire et redire infra septem dies, sibique de statu suo renunciare, fecit hoc mortuis providens si indigerent auxilium sibi suisque solatium atque incitamentum omnibus ad simile meritum.” EB c. 13, fol. 57v. 102. For more on this, see Chapter 6. 103. “Bene tamen et optime agitur mecum, unam et non ultimam mansionem in domo patris sortitus sum, similis factus in gloria sanctorum iocundus et splendidus in splendoribus eorum. Est quidem inter nos sicut meritorum sic et premiorum discretio et suo quisque gloriatur privilegio, unitas tamen est gaudii, me habente in alio quod in me deest michi, sicque unum sumus omnis in illa unitate illa gloriosa Christi corpori.” EB c. 13, fol. 58v.

chapter 6 1. “Parvum immo nullum est hoc ordinis et religionis nostre preconium, ac pro minimo filiis ordinis quorum gloria tota hec est testimonium consciencie sue.” EB c. 21, fol. 66v. Engelhard is quoting II Cor. 1:12.

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Notes to Pages 160–164

2. For traditional studies of the history of penance, see Lea, History of Auricular Confession; Anciaux, La the´ologie du sacrament de pe´nitence; Poschmann, Penance and the Annointing of the Sick; and Vogel, Le pre´cheur et la pe´nitence. For discussions of the historiography of penance, see McLaughlin, “Truth, Tradition and History,” 19–72, and Meens, “The Historiography of Early Medieval Penance,” 73–97. For a recent work that still emphasizes the formation of interiorized subjectivities in the twelfth century, see Kramer, Sin, Interiority, and Selfhood. 3. See the works of de Jong, Penitential State; Meens, Penance; Hamilton, The Practice of Penance; Mansfield, Humiliation of Sinners; Biller and Minnis, eds., Handling Sin; and the essays in Firey, ed., A New History of Penance. See also Wei, Gratian, and Larson, Master of Penance. For a different perspective, see Murray, “Confession Before 1215,” 51–81. 4. Rapp, “Spiritual Guarantors,” 121–48, and Firey, “Blushing Before the Judge,” 173–200. 5. Goering, “The Scholastic Turn,” 219–37, and Kramer, Sin, Interiority, and Selfhood, 5–7, 103–10. 6. Pranger, “Medieval Ethics and the Illusion of Interiority,” 27. Stock notes that Bernard’s ideas about sin and intent resemble those of Abelard, despite their disagreement on other matters; Implications of Literacy, 454. 7. Wagner, “Cum aliquis venerit ad sacerdotem,” 209–10. 8. RB c. 7, c. 23–30, c. 43–47, c. 69–71. 9. RB c. 32. 10. Firey, “Blushing Before the Judge,” 190, and Wagner, “Cum aliquis venerit ad sacerdotem,” 214–15. 11. Goering, “The Scholastic Turn,” 221–28; Wei, Gratian, 89, 91–94, 117. See also Larson, Master of Penance, 92–99. All of these scholars reject the easy distinction between “confessionalists” and “contritionists,” although Wei still uses that terminology. 12. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis 2.14.1, 2.14.8; PL 176: 549–54, 564–70. 13. Colish, Peter Lombard, 608; Goering, “The Scholastic Turn,” 232; Peter Lombard, The Sentences 4.22.2. 14. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis 2.14.8, PL 176: 564–70. 15. Peter Lombard, The Sentences 4.16.1.11; Colish, Peter Lombard, 607, argues that Peter Lombard clearly articulated a “contritionist” position and compares him to Gratian, whom she presents as “confessionalist.” Recent works on Gratian have reinterpreted his arguments, and many scholars no longer focus on a clear divide between twelfth-century contritionists and confessionalists. 16. Colish, Peter Lombard, 604. 17. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis 1.8.11–12; PL 176: 312–14. 18. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis 2.13.3–12, PL 176: 527–50. 19. Peter Lombard, The Sentences 4.14.3, trans. Silano. 20. Peter Lombard, The Sentences 4.14.2, 4.14.3, trans. Silano. 21. EM Prologue 1, 2–4. For a discussion of penance in the EM, see Jacques Berlioz, “Pe´nitence et confession dans le Grand Exorde de Cıˆteaux,” in Le Grand Exorde, 435–46. 22. For the monastic emphasis on repentance before a judgmental God, see Fulton [Brown], From Judgment to Passion, 60–192. 23. See, for instance, Bernard of Clairvaux, Letters 107–12, 411; SBO 7.267–87, 8.392–94 (James, nos. 108–14), and “On Conversion: A Sermon to Clerics,” SBO 4.69–116, in Sermons on Conversion, trans. Saı¨d. 24. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs 11.2, SBO 1.55.

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25. Jean Leclercq, “Saint Bernard on Confession,” 203. 26. Jean Leclercq, “The Imitation of Christ,” 51–52. 27. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs 10.6, SBO 1:51. 28. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs 16:13–15, SBO 1:96–97. 29. Pranger, Bernard of Clairvaux, 110. 30. Bernard of Clairvaux, Steps of Humility and Pride 15–16, SBO 3:27–8. 31. Bernard of Clairvaux, Steps of Humility and Pride 40, SBO 3:46–7. 32. Bernard of Clairvaux, Steps of Humility and Pride 42, SBO 3:48–9. 33. His description is akin to his later discussion of heretics in his Song of Songs sermons 63 and 64, whom he considered secretive foxes who spoiled the grapevines. They looked holy but their deception became apparent only when they refused to separate from the company of women. 34. Heloise, Letter 4, in Luscombe, Letter Collection, 172–75. 35. Colish, Peter Lombard, 604. 36. Collectaneum 3.10, 4.31. Yet see Collectaneum 1.5, in which a monk is rewarded with a vision after confessing to other monks. 37. Collectaneum 4.37. 38. Collectaneum 3.5. 39. LM 76 (3.7); “nec paruipendendum esse confessionis sacramentum, sine quo etiam tales ignorancie taliter imputantur”; and LM 143. 40. EM 5.4; see also Conrad’s elaboration of Herbert’s stories [LM 27, 43 (1.28 and 2.10)], EM 4.22 and 3.32. 41. EM 5.2; LM 58 (2.36). 42. DM 2.1, 3.1. In Book 9, on the Eucharist, Caesarius excerpts passages from Peter Lombard and Peter Poitiers. See Smirnova, “Narrative Theology in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum,” 127–28. 43. DM 3.1. 44. “Mederi contritis corde, confessiones illorum recipiendo, et poenitentiam iniungendo.” DM 2.28. 45. For the confession of monks, see DM 3.23–25, 3.33, 3.53; for tears of contrition, see 2.12, 2.16. 46. Pons became abbot of Grandselve in 1158, abbot of Clairvaux in 1165, and, in 1170, the bishop of Clermont-sur-Ferrand. He is the source of a story in the Collectaneum (4.53), but he is not in that collection as a protagonist. Herbert of Clairvaux recounted a series of stories from Grandselve, LM 70–77 (3.1–3.8). See also EM 2.24–26, 4.1, 5.4. A second story in Engelhard’s collection, which he attributes to an unnamed abbot at an unknown monastery in the affiliation of Clairvaux, probably derived from an oral story about Pons as well. See below. 47. See McGuire, “Rebirth and Responsibility,” 151. 48. “Quia confessus et penitens quilibet et quantumlibet reus numquam indulgencia priuaretur.” LM 77 (3.8). 49. “Ego salutis tue fidiussorem me constituo et anima mea pro anima tua requiratur, dummodo obediens perseueres in ordine isto.” LM 77 (3.8). 50. “Ex huius ergo sacratissimo ore audiui quia omnes qui in isto ordine usque ad mortem perseuerabunt, salutem eternam ab ipso consecuturi sunt.” LM 77 (3.8). 51. EM 2.26, trans. Ward and Savage, 175. 52. “Gaudium ex hoc omnibus sed pre omnibus abbati quod talem parturisset in quo formatus est Christus.” EB c. 9, fol. 53r.

254

Notes to Pages 170–176

53. “Vultus tristior, visus asperior, sermo acerbior, actus segnior, loquela paratior, et ipsem ad levia queque mobilior.” EB c. 9, fol. 53v. 54. “Commota sunt omnia viscera eius, fit mater ex patre, parans uterum ut iterum parturiat et reformet in filio formam Christi deformatam.” EB c. 9, fol. 53v. 55. “O exclamat ille quid loqueris? Quid de nichilo loqueris? O ego carceres horridos atque perpetuos, o ego lacus scenosos atque ranosos, o gladios, o ignes scorpiones et genus omne penarum, o denique blandum michi omne quod sevit, suave michi omne quod dolet. O levis et brevis michi omnis cruciatus et passio dum modo securus fierem de remissione coram deo.” EB c. 9, fol. 54r. 56. “Dictumque est michi. Lectus unus cum una corona tuus est, alter cum duabus abbatis tui, et unam meruit pro conversatione sua et alteram pro tua conversione. Nam quod ait scriptura, sicut Christus posuit pro nobis animam suam, ita et nos debemus pro fratribus animas ponere, hoc iste implevit, ponens animam suam pro te quo facto et te salvavit et se.” EB c. 9, fol. 54v. 57. “Mulcet, fovet, blanditur, fodit parietem, et ecce ostium in pariete.” EB c. 9, fol. 53v. 58. EB c. 10, fols. 54v–55v. 59. “Hunc dum primo introitu vellent monachum facere abnuit, servus inquiens monachorum ero, et illis circa divina occupatis atque altario servientibus ego pastor pecorum ero.” EB c. 12, fol. 56v. 60. “Nichil docuit quod prius ipse non faceret, docens et faciens omnia que domini sui sciret voluntatem et gloriam altissimi redoleret.” EB c. 32, fol. 72r. 61. “Beatus ipse cui ne inputaret dominus peccatum, ad confessionem remissionemque meruit etiam redire post transitum.” EB c. 32, fol. 72v. 62. “Taceam de illo facie ad faciem angelorum colloquia.” EB c. 32, fol. 72v. 63. Peter had entered the Cistercian house of Bonnevaux in 1122 and became the first abbot of Tamie in 1132 before being elected archbishop. He was canonized in 1199. Geoffrey of Auxerre wrote his vita; AASS 2 May 320–35. Neither of Engelhard’s stories appears in this vita. 64. EB c. 30, fols. 70v–71v. 65. “Dum presentia quam futura pluris estimant, appetunt suavia dura refugiunt.” EB c. 31, fol. 72r. 66. See Chapter 1. 67. “De questu nichil totum de pietate curavit.” EB c. 22, fol. 67r. 68. “Bertolfus in se nutrioris expressit ymaginem.” EB c. 23, fol. 68r. “Vir beatus hic erat, nutritus a nutritore meo volmero decano, cuius in tantum profecit exemplo ut exemplum fieret ipse quod pauci modo sequerentur aut nemo.” EB c. 21, fol. 67r. 69. “Prior fuit in domo nostra, tam merito quam officio, humilis ipse in oculis suis, in aliorum pro vite sanctitate sublimis. Hoc habuit imitabile vir beatus quod et beatos faceret imitatores suos.” EB c. 25, fol. 69r. 70. “Sed laudem partius ne videar amore mentitus.” EB c. 22, fol. 67r. 71. “Quod denique sepulchrum dealbatum foris intus autem plenum ossibus mortuorum et omni spurcicia.” EB c. 17, fol. 61v. See also EB c. 33, fol. 74r, and Griesser, “Engelhard von Langheim und Abt Erbo,” 76: 20. 72. See also Farmer in Rosenwein, Head, and Farmer, “Monks and Their Enemies,” 794, who argues that, by the twelfth century, the “watchful gaze of the community” had started to break down. 73. Colish, Peter Lombard, 604. 74. DM 3.30, 3.40–45.

Notes to Pages 176–179

255

75. LM 129 (not in PL) and EM 2.31; LM 132 (not in PL) and EM 5.5. 76. Conrad’s concern about despair emerges even in his retelling of the Collectaneum’s tale about Bernard guaranteeing Cistercian salvation. According to Conrad, Bernard initially incited such terror in his monks that some “were gravely disturbed in conscience and on the point of falling into the pit of despair.” Only then did Bernard remind them not to forget the depth of God’s mercy, which was so great it would even have forgiven Judas if he had been a Cistercian. EM 2.5, trans. Ward and Savage, 134. 77. EM 2.22, 2.26, 3.19, 4.33, 4.35, 5.2. See also LM 11 (1.11). 78. EB c. 5 c. 8, c. 9, c. 16, c. 19, c. 20. 79. EB c. 19. 80. See Chapter 5. 81. EM 2.24; LM 3.1. 82. “Abbas vir fidelis et prudens ac fiducie dives in deum meritis illorum sua conpensans.” EB c. 13, fol. 57v. 83. “Est et aliud quod honorem minuit michi, sanctitas singularis et singularitas obstinata, quod sine patris spiritualis assensu cunctis vellem districtius vivere, et uno pulmento unaque cuculla iugiter contentus esse. Cucullas enim duas et duo pulmenta regula nostra dari, et accepi vult, quam ego transgrediens frigore ac fame plus altero laboravi et minus accepi.” EB c. 13, fol. 58v. 84. “Dicta fuit hec ad cautelam servande mundicie ad commonitionem singularitatis evitande, ad consolationem denique omnis anime voluntatis bone.” EB c. 13, fol. 58v. 85. Similarly, the dead necromancer refused his friend’s offer of prayers, suggesting that nothing could help him. 86. Bernard of Clairvaux, Steps of Humility and Pride 42, trans. Conway, 70–71. 87. “Gloriam utilitate, affabilitate gratiam paraverat sibi, ut amicitias eius appeterent et omnes et singuli.” EB c. 20, fol. 64v. 88. “Et exurens labores suos ustione illa quam detestatur apostolus, melius est inquiens nubere quam uri. Nam unus ex his erat quos item apostolus molles vocat, hoc adiciens quod huiusmodi regnum dei non intraeant.” EB c. 20, fol. 64v. 89. “Diu sic male se tractaverat, expectatus non penituit nec confessionem fecit.” EB c. 20, fol. 64v. See Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, 180 n. 38, for the usual association of molles with masturbation, and Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy, 169, for the misogynistic implications of accusations of molles. 90. “Abbas vir bonus et prudens, doctus a salamone diligenter inspicere vultum pecoris sui, scire voluit conscientiam fratris infirmi, non frustra infirmati, sicut inpossibile est sine causa quid fieri.” EB c. 20, fol. 65r. 91. “Aggreditur eum salutaribus monitis, condolere se illi, haberet modo patientiam, aperiret conscientiam, paratum se portare cum eo quicquid esset illud quod forte gravaretur in animo.” EB c. 20, fol. 65r. 92. “Dei eram servus in publico sed inimici servus in occulto. . . . Hoc michi ex longo mos fuit, in hoc usque hodie persevero, non secuta confessio, non penitentia, non satisfactio.” EB c. 20, fol. 65r. 93. “Curam denique illius egit sed inuliter illo recipiente sed mox reiciente verbum solacii, versoque in arcum pravum sibi et in se ipsum vertente odium cordis sui. Siquidem penituit eum fuisse confessum ductusque verecundia et tristicia que est ad mortem, morti cogitavit destinare se ipsum. . . . Concepit dolorem et peperit iniquitatem cum iniquis reputatus ipse, et heu proprio iudicio condempnatus.” EB c. 20, fol. 65r.

256

Notes to Pages 179–182

94. “Querunt in ecclesia, in cella domestica, intus et foris, non hic invenitur aut ibi. Querunt adhuc et ecce! ille mersus et submersus in latrina sus lota in volutabro luti. Mortuus est ille morte tam turpi quam terribili.” EB c. 20, fol. 65v. 95. “Facit abbas omne quod potest, facto non proficit, seminans verbum super petram et in spinas quod aves tollerent, non quo ille proficeret.” EB c. 20, fol. 65v. 96. “Frater erat serviens infirmis sicut et ille superior officiosus in omnibus omnibus paratus ad quod quisque se vellet.” EB c. 19, fols. 63v–64r. Clearly, this was a position easily abused. 97. “Musitabant de illo res incestas non erat qui argueret, sed et neganti facile credebatur stantibus et negantibus cum illo qui eius utebantur obsequio.” EB c. 19, fol. 64r. 98. “Mane facto non comparuit ille, quesitum est ubi esset, et ecce! nudus, amens, et moriens in cellario invenitur. In loco fui tunc et ego cum currentibus curro venitur ad cellarium, et nuditas illa nil boni parturiit in conscientiis singulorum.” EB c. 19, fol. 64r. 99. “Biduo se illic fuisse noctibus cum fratre dormisse, tunc temporis ad nature opus exisse, redisse statim et illum sine sensu et voce repperisse nec aliud credere quam quod eum demon sub specie sui occiderit cui ait mecum peccando servivit.” EB c. 19, fol. 64r. 100. Engelhard did not specify whether these were judges from the order or from the local diocese. 101. “Confitetur nichil tamen horum que gravia essent, sed ea que nemo non faceret. Communicatur inmunis a gratia, factus unum cum iuda, felicior tamen in fine quam iudas.” EB c. 17, fol. 61r. 102. “Preminebat in ceteris locus unus aliquid regium redolens, ut qui hunc apprehendisset, principem et regis generum se putaret.” EB c. 18, fol. 62v. 103. “Facit ille ut vir excommunicat locum fraternitati non conmunem qui pacem turbaret, caritatem destrueret, divideret unitatem.” EB c. 18, fol. 62v. 104. “Fastu ergo cecatus et elatione deceptus ivit in mortem suam, sciens et despiciens abbatis sententiam. In loco anathematis stravit eadem nocte et ad insipientiam sibi dormiens et requiescens sed non in pace in id ipsum.” EB c. 18, fol. 62v–63r. 105. “Ecce ille mortuus invenitur, protractus electo in pavimento proiectus. Oculis horrende patentibus, ore spumante, vultu truculento, sed et membris omnibus exterminatis et deformatis in tormento.” EB c. 18, fol. 63r. 106. “Camerarius ut aiunt vir superbus et arrogans. . . . In potestate esse se scivit sub potestate nescivit, nesciens quod esset ipse miles sed quod haberet sub se milites.” EB c. 18, fol. 62v. 107. “Erat in eo videre miseriam dampnare inobedientiam calcare superbiam, et illam probare sententiam. Quam deus superbis resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam.” EB c. 18, fol. 63r. 108. For examples, EB c. 14, 15, 23, 33, 34; for remedies for temptation, see c. 6; for models of virtuous behavior, see c. 9, 13, 14, 15, 18. 109. EB c. 16, 17, 18, 20. 110. For stories offering consolation and comfort, EB c. 10, 13, 14, 23; stories offering joy, c. 13, 15; stories teaching faith, c. 6, 28. 111. “Nunc vetulus scribo oblivione indignum arbitrans laudis Christi preconium, quod infide temptatis auferret ambiguum, incredulis inferret metum, negligentium argueret tedium, studium acueret diligentium, postremo perfectionis amore ferventibus augebit incentivum.” EB c. 6, fol. 52r. 112. Newman, Boundaries of Charity, 60.

Notes to Pages 183–190

257

113. Kramer, Sin, Interiority, and Selfhood, 35. 114. Pranger, “Medieval Ethics and the Illusion of Interiority,” 27. 115. Kramer, Sin, Interiority, and Selfhood, 134. 116. See Moore, The War on Heresy and Formation of a Persecuting Society; also Elliott, Proving Women. 117. “Vidit hoc ille cordis inspector nec despexit.” EB c. 32, fol. 72r. 118. “Vidit hoc scrutans corda et renes deus misertus est, nec patitur frustra id fieri nec omnino celari.” EB c. 15, fol. 59v. 119. “Testis in celo fidelis vigilabat super hoc vidit et displicuit ei, et ipse paratus ulcisci.” EB 19, fol. 64r. 120. “Sic de illo estimabat homo videns in facie sed aliter deus qui videt in corde.” EB c. 20, fol. 64v. 121. “Atque intendenti super se intentius serviunt.” EB, c. 13, fol. 58v. 122. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs 6.8, SBO 1.30. 123. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs 10.4–5, SBO 1.50. 124. Les “Ecclesiastica officia” cistercien c. 70, 208–9. Some Cistercian stories emphasize the penitent’s surprise at the lenient acts of satisfaction imposed by these confessors. 125. “Confessus est et non negavit, se vere peccatorem, se mole criminum, se torrente iniquitatis, et pelago iniusticie obrutum, nec iam pertinere se ad deum cum ille sit iustus et reddat unicuique secundum opus suum.” EB c. 9, fol. 53v. 126. “Curam denique illius egit sed inuliter, illo recipiente sed mox reiciente verbum solacii, versoque in arcum pravum sibi et in se ipsum vertente odium cordis sui.” EB c. 20, fol. 65r. 127. “Iussum est celari sed non potuit, res defertur ad iudices et iudicant corpus eius de cimiterio eici terrori viventibus ut peccare vereantur ubi nec misertum est corporis mortui.” EB c. 19, fol. 64r–v. 128. “Porro et indigna coniunximus, finem illorum ostendentes sine honore, verum et cum horror, ut quos ad bonum bona non provocant, revocentur a malis vel terrore.” EB, fol. 78r. 129. “Timor et tremor venit super omnes irruit super eos formido et pavor territi purgabantur, et manus suas lavabant in sanguine peccatoris.” EB c. 20, fol. 65v. 130. “Erat in eo videre miseriam dampnare inobedientiam calcare superbiam et illam probare sententiam, quam deus superbis resistit humilibus autem dat gratiam.” EB c. 18, fol. 63r. 131. Van ’t Spijker, Fictions of the Inner Life, 236–41.

conclusion 1. Lester, Creating Cistercian Nuns, 84. 2. Beach, Trauma of Monastic Reform, 75–77; Griffiths, Nuns’ Priests’ Tales, 18–26. 3. See my “Marriage, Maternity, and the Formation of a Sacramental Imagination.” 4. See Bernard of Clairvaux’s In laudibus viriginis matris, and Aelred of Rievaulx’s Tractatus de Iesu puero duodenni, among other works. 5. Rubin, Mother of God, 153–55. See, for instance, EM 3.27. 6. Mary does appear as Madonna with child in one of the stories added later to Engelhard’s collection; it is not clear if this is his story.

258

Notes to Pages 191–202

7. “Quod talem parturisset in quo formatus est Christus,” and “parans uterum ut iterum parturiat et reformet in filio formam Christi deformatam.” EB c. 9, fol. 53r–53v. 8. VM c. 8, p. 438. 9. VM c. 9, p. 439. 10. VM c. 3, p. 437. 11. Bynum, “Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother,” 146–53. 12. For another scholar who notes the circularity of faith, see Forrest, Trustworthy Men, 32. 13. McGinn, “The Changing Shape of Late Medieval Mysticism,” 205–10. See also Corbari, Vernacular Theology, Watson, “Censorhip and Cultural Change.” For Francis and “religio,” see Thompson, Francis of Assisi, 195, and Delarun, Misadventure of Francis. 14. Smirnova, “Caesarius of Heisterbach Following the Rules of Rhetoric,” 83–87. 15. Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society, 94–116. 16. But now see Forrest, Trustworthy Men, who explores how the intellectual and sociological components of faith and trust together formed the late medieval church.

appendix 1. Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 521; EB c. 34, fol. 78r. Erbo resigned from his position as abbot at Easter in 1187 and died on 20 January, 1188. See Worstbrock, “Erbo II,” 573–74. 2. Schwarzer, “Vitae und Miracula,” 515. 3. Stories of the Saydnaya image began to spread in western Europe in the late twelfth century. Kedar, “Convergences,” 89–100, and Devos, “Les premie`res versions occidentales de la le´gende de Saı¨dnaia,” 245–78.

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index

Abelard, Peter, 108, 163, 166, 194, 252n6; on importance of doubt, 87, 89; reactions against, 83, 86–88, 94, 100, 162, 228n62; Theologia christiana, 88 Adam, abbot of Langheim, 23 Adam of Perseigne, 211n8 Admont, 20, 25, 34–36, 206 Aelred of Rievaulx, 114, 211n8, 247n33 Agnes of Bohemia, 33 Agnes, queen of France, 29–30 Albigensian Crusade, 7 Alexander III, Pope, 39, 65 Alexander IV, Pope, 39 Ammersee, 29 Andechs-Merania (family), 29–35, 46, 188, 202, 219n66–9. See also Mechthild of Diessen Andreas II, king of Hungary, 25, 29–30, 33, 220n76 Ann of Bohemia, 30, 33 Apophthegmata, 51 Aquinas, Thomas, 72 Aristotle, 9, 72, 75, 160 Arnoldstein, 20, 31 Assumption of Mary, 34, 73, 147, 202, 211n86, 220n79, 238n20 Augustine of Hippo, 91, 100, 101–2, 182; Confessions, 76, 232n20; De doctrina christiana, 75; Literal Interpretation of Genesis, 76; on epistemology, 10, 16, 71–73, 95, 99; on sacraments, 74, 77, 95, 192; on sight, 76–80, 83, 86, 88, 90, 92, 233n28; on signs,

15, 72, 75–76, 78, 192; On the Trinity, 76; on will, 161, 183, 194 Austria, 31, 35 authorship, 53–54, 56, 61–62, 64, 69, 79 Baldwin of Ford, 109–10; De sacramento altaris, 109 Bamberg, 2, 21, 23, 26–29, 31, 34; bishops of, 21, 27, 29, 31–32, 49, 66; charters, 21; school of, 21–22, 88. See also Eberhard, bishop of Bamberg; Egibert, bishop of Bamberg; Ekbert, bishop of Bamberg; Otto I, bishop of Bamberg; Otto II, bishop of Bamberg Banz, 20, 28, 31 baptism, 12, 109, 173 Basil the Great, 113 Bavaria, 29 Bede, the Venerable, 53 Benedictine monks, 35, 218n52 Benedictine Rule, 112, 129, 142, 161, 163, 248n46; abbot in, 169–70; Cistercian observance of, 106, 135, 139, 167, 177, 222n104; prayer in, 134–35, 245n10; women’s observance of, 38, 108, 221n92, 222n104 Benedict of Nursia, 51–52 Berengar of Tours, 85 Bernard of Clairvaux: canonization of, 52, 66, 225n23; gendered imagery, 41, 43–45, 97, 190, 223n128; hostility to schools, 7, 83, 86, 93–94, 100, 194; on Cistercian sanctity, 135–37, 146, 151–52, 158, 244n119, 255n76; on deception, 165–66, 177, 182, 194, 231n113; on experience 90, 93–95, 136, 236n97; on faith, 72–73, 85–87; on labor,

290

Index

Bernard of Clairvaux (continued ) 139–42, 156; on sacraments, 102, 109–10, 118, 129, 164, 168, 192, 234n55; on the Virgin, 117, 150, 241n64; stories about, 52–53, 56, 84, 125–26, 135–37, 146, 150, 188, 192, 227n52, 243n101; typologies of sight, 87–88, 94–95. See also Song of Songs; Steps of Humility and Pride Berthold, patriarch of Aquilela, 30, 32, 216n11 Berthold I, Count of Andechs, 30–32, 128, 201 Berthold II, Count of Andechs, 30–32, 40 Berthold III, Count of Andechs, 29–30, 33 Bertolf (monk), 21, 174 Bezelin of Langheim (monk), 23, 68, 147, 229n78, 247n40 Bildhausen, 20, 28, 39–40, 222n107, 222n113 Boto of Pru¨fening, 200; Homilies on Ezekiel, 200, 205 Bynum, Caroline Walker, 114, 225n225 Caesarius of Heisterbach: use of acrostic, 215n1; his collections of stories, 53–54, 56, 217n21, 250n88, 253n42; on sacraments, 91, 124–26, 128–29, 167–68, 242n78, 253n42; on sinful priests, 127, 176; on vision and faith, 73, 83, 90–93, 100, 123, 193; on visions of Mary, 131–32, 140–41, 150; his rhetorical style, 63, 183, 196 canonization, 33, 49, 52, 65–66, 136, 225n23 Carinthia, 29, 31 Caˆrta, 20, 25 Carthusian Order, 106, 110 Cassian, John, 52, 77; Collationes, 51; De institutis coenobiorum, 51 Cathars, 7 Chapter General: authority of, 7, 24, 46, 49, 52, 187; circulation of stories at, 23, 54, 61–62, 67, 80–83; regulation of nuns by, 2, 36, 38–39 chapter, monastic, 62–64, 151, 179, 184–85, 191 charters, 21, 27, 32, 36–40, 107, 230n97 Chartres (cathedral), 116 Chronicon Clarevallense, 52 Chuno (monk), 23, 181 Cicero, 75 Cistercian culture: multiple views on Eucharist, 16, 103; narrative resonance with, 112, 114, 181; preservation of, 19, 47, 188; textual transmission of, 10, 17, 165, 129, 189

Cistercian nuns: following male customs, 1–2, 8, 12, 16–17, 20, 37, 42, 46, 123, 130–31, 145–46, 186–87, 189, 211n92; foundations of, 20, 26, 33, 38–39; pastoral care of, 7, 23, 37–39, 107–8, 160, 169, 184 Cistercian order: holiness of, 8, 127, 131–33, 137, 143, 148, 157, 159, 181; organization of 18, 23, 25, 27, 37–40, 49, 141, 189; shared stories from, 52–54, 60–62, 69, 124, 135, 188, 197 Cıˆteaux, 20, 23, 37, 135; artistic production at, 104, 119 Clairvaux, 20, 137, 140, 172; monks of, 37, 58–59, 65–67, 146; stories from, 52–55, 58–61, 83–84, 136–37, 140, 150, 168–69, 175, 188, 192. See also Collectaneum; Exordium magnum; Herbert of Clairvaux Clare of Assisi, 33 Clark, Anne, 118 Cluny, 52, 58, 68, 106, 134–35, 188 cognitive science, 4–5, 13–14, 16, 111–12, 114, 236n87 Collectaneum exemplorum ac visionum Clarevallense (Collectaneum): authors of, 52–53, 62, 100, 225n24; sources of stories, 55–56, 58–60, 84, 91, 124, 225n10; specific stories from, 84–85, 89, 131–32, 136, 140, 146, 166, 243n96 Collectio exemplorum Cisterciensis (Collectio), 53, 56, 226n30 Cologne, 20, 91, 121–23, 129, 182–83, 194; archbishop of, 43; ten thousand virgins of, 219n70. See also Herman the Jew communion. See Eucharist confession: as a sacrament, 10, 160–64, 167, 175, 252n15; deathbed, 171–72, 174; deceptive, 166, 176, 180; in monastic life, 164–65, 167, 170, 178, 185; of nuns, 36, 107; to an abbot, 10, 152, 154, 166; to a priest, 2, 160, 163, 166, 168, 176, 183, 190 Conrad (conversus, knight), 36 Conrad of Eberbach: on Eucharist, 109, 118, 124; on faith and sight, 85–86, 88–89, 90–93, 100, 123, 193; on Mary, 140, 150, 152; on monastic chant, 126, 147; on repentance, 132, 164, 167–70, 176, 180; rhetorical style, 63, 183, 196 conscience, 17, 63, 84, 89, 159–86, 187, 195, 255n76; testimony of, 148, 159–60 Council of Sens, 87 Coyroux, 37

Index Damien, Peter, 134, 164 Daniel, Book of, 104–6, 132, 146, 238n8 Daniel, abbot of Scho¨nau, 118–19, 125 De Certeau, Michel, 12 Desert Fathers, 149 despair: and loss of faith, 89; in monastic life, 44, 84, 145, 152, 169–71, 174, 179; remedies for, 159, 175, 178, 181, 184–85, 195, 255n76; signs of, 169, 176, 178, 181 De vera et falsa penitentia, 183 Dialogue on Miracles. See Caesarius of Heisterbach Diessen, 20, 36, 128, 219n70–71; Augustinian canons of, 32, 191, 201, 219n69, 227n53 discernment: and self-knowledge, 165, 183, 186, 197; of abbots, 166–67, 169, 173, 175–77, 181–83; of priests, 158–63, 166, 168, 194; of signs, 10, 76, 88, 95–96, 119–20, 192 Dominican order, 7, 65 doubt: about the sacraments, 83–85, 91–92, 112–14; about worthiness, 117–18, 129, 182; and interpretation of signs, 9, 71, 74, 93, 112, 114, 193; and knowledge, 87, 89; cured by sight, 91–92, 100; in a story’s veracity, 58, 67–68, 80; modern studies of, 13, 214n45, 234n4, 236n82, 240n48, 244n117 Eadmer, 56; Vita Anselmi, 56 Eberbach, 20, 53 Eberhard, bishop of Bamberg, 68, 219n62 Ebrach, 20, 28, 31, 226n33, 230n22; and Langheim, 23, 66, 218n46, 218n51; and Wechterswinkel 39–40, 222n114; stories about, 26, 127, 201, 202, 215n1, 226n33. See also Herman abbot of Ebrach Edelstetten, 32, 36, 57, 191 Egibert, bishop of Bamberg, 31 Egres, 24 Eichsta¨tt, diocese of, 29 Ekbert, bishop of Bamberg, 30, 34 Elizabeth of Hungary, 29–30, 33–34 Elizabeth of Scho¨nau, 52, 119 Elliott, Dyan, 10 Embrico, bishop of Wu¨rzburg, 38, 222n230 enclosure, of women, 35–36, 38 Engelhard of Langheim: attitudes toward writing, 49–50, 56–57, 61–62, 65–66, 220n79; connection to Wechterswinkel, 38, 40, 187, 222n114; friendships, 2, 23–25, 41–42, 48–50, 174–75, 197; ideas of spiritual equality, 2, 19, 23, 36, 41–42, 118, 156,

291

172, 188–89, 128; influenced by Bernard of Clairvaux, 41, 43–45, 73, 93–97, 102, 116–18, 177, 182, 192, 194; ignores Bernard of Clairvaux, 56, 137, 141–42, 156, 158, 188, 190; life, 1–2, 18–26, 200, 217n29; nonCistercian influences on, 2, 25, 34–35, 46, 189, 200; relations with Andechs, 32–35, 40, 46, 144–45, 188, 201–2, 217n28; use of humility tropes; 21, 24, 40, 50, 66. See also Engelhard’s book of exempla; Erbo II; eschatology; Langheim; Mary, Virgin; rhetoric; Vita Mathildis; Wechterswinkel Engelhard’s book of exempla: contents, 3, 35, 54, 79–80, 101, 137, 153, 155; dating, 24, 123; influence of Cistercian networks, 23–24, 60–61, 67–69; letter of dedication, 41, 63; manuscripts, 25, 34, 45, 54, 199–209; narrative voice, 18, 41, 43, 58, 62, 64, 111–12, 137, 178, 183; shared with others, 2, 8, 38, 187, 189, 197 Erbo II, abbot of Pru¨fening: interest in stories, 2, 8, 40, 54, 60–62, 67–68, 80, 197, 226n34; letters to Engelhard, 23–25, 48–49, 64, 199–201; resignation and death, 200, 211n6, 258n1 eschatology, 104, 135, 157, 238n8; Engelhard’s lack of interest in, 101, 132, 149, 154, 157, 245n5 Esther, 42, 191 Eucharist, 202, 226n33, 243n97–8; as selfsacrifice, 115–19; connecting heaven and earth, 121, 123, 138–39, 146; debates about 9, 77–78, 103, 159–60; devotion to, 78, 102, 128, 196; doubt about, 84–85, 113–14, 167, 240n48; in monastic life, 16, 101–2, 104–6, 108–11, 125–26, 148, 151, 192; interpretation of, 111, 121–23, 181, 193, 242n85; mistreatment of, 22, 120, 129, 124; sacrament of, 12, 99; spiritual reception of, 109, 239n31–32; visible qualities of, 1, 10, 72–74, 91. See also miracles; visions Eugenius III, Pope, 39, 88 Euphemia, abbess of Altomu¨nster, 29–30 exempla, 12, 15, 90, 102, 214n51; collections of, 54, 59, 123–24, 127, 149; creating interpretative communities, 13–14, 52, 112; describing individuals, 65, 169, 174, 176; pedagogy of, 8, 9, 17, 51, 147, 181; replacing physical presence, 2, 10, 49–50, 160, 184–86, 189; types of, 5, 50, 196, 225n11, 225n22, 226n32. See also Engelhard’s book

292

Index

exempla (continued ) of exempla; spiritual formation; textual communication Exordium Magnum, 89, 91, 131, 146–48, 150, 152; elaborating Herbert of Clairvaux’s stories, 53–54, 56, 85–86, 88, 124, 140, 169. See also Conrad of Eberbach Faith (fides): as confidence in unseen, 9, 85, 96, 193, 198, 241n59; Christian, 68, 74, 141, 144, 148, 168, 238n8; learned through monastic practice, 11, 12, 17, 100, 110, 137, 192–93, 215n55; learned through stories, 6, 14, 63, 71, 102, 129, 159, 182, 195; of the community, 84–85; opposed to reason, 53, 85–89, 109; sacrament of, 93, 96; seeing with, 10, 15, 73, 93–100, 111–14, 120–23; types of, 6, 9, 12–13, 72, 198, 212n13, 214n39, 214n44–45, 258n16 Fauconnier, Gilles, 111 First Epistle of John, 171 First Epistle to the Corinthians, 87, 98, 101–2, 111, 178 Fourth Lateran Council, 39, 123–24, 127, 160–61, 168 Franciscans, 33, 195 Francis of Assisi, 196 Franconia, 2, 22–23, 27, 31, 47–48, 66, 71 Frankenwald, 27 gender, 213n31; silence of women, 20, 40, 150; weakness of women, 41–46, 119, 189–91; strength of women, 41–46, 189, 191; spiritual equality of men and women, 2, 19, 36, 42, 188–89, 197, 211n92. See also Mary, Virgin; queer imagery; women Gerhoh of Reichersberg, 34, 36, 73, 202, 206–7, 220n80, 221n86 German Peasants’ War, 27 Gertrude, abbess of Trebnitz, 30, 33 Gertrude the Great, 137 Gertrude, queen of Hungary, 29–30, 33, 220n76 Gertrude von Stahleck, 39, 222n106 Giech, 28, 219n58 Glaber, Ralph, 134 Gospel of Luke, 116 Goswin, abbot of Foigny, 84–85 Gotschalk of Langheim: visions at death, 155, 171–72, 191; visions showing spiritual worthiness, 115, 117–18, 129, 149

Grandselve, 20, 67, 169, 174 granges, 27, 32, 39, 107, 126 Gregory IX, Pope, 39, 222n112 Gregory the Great, 53, 78, 85, 188, 233n29; Dialogues, 51–52, 56, 77, 109 Griesser, Bruno, 203, 207 Griffiths, Fiona, 108 Guerric of Igny, 182, 224n1, 246n16 Habakkuk, 104–5, 238n8 Halberstadt, 29 Hartwig, provost of Diessen, 36 Hebrews, Epistle to the, 9, 85, 96, 198 Hedwig of Silesia, 29–30, 33, 220n77 Heiligenkreuz, 20, 24–25, 33, 217n29, 217n34 Heilsbronn, 20, 28, 31, 218n51; abbot of, 66 Heisterbach, 20. See also Caesarius of Heisterbach Helfta, 137 Heloise, abbess of Paraclete, 108, 166, 221n92 Henry VI, Emperor, 26 Henry, abbot of Millstatt, 30–31 Henry, abbot of Morimond, 57–58 Henry, duke of Silesia, 30, 33 Henry of Marcy, 126 Herbert of Clairvaux, 88, 124, 140, 170, 176–77; Liber visionum et miraculorum Clarevallensium (LM), 53–54, 56, 60, 166, 169, 203; on sacraments, 166–67; on visions, 85–86 heresy, 7, 14, 85, 195, 197, 253n33. See also Cathars He`rival, 106 Herman, abbot of Ebrach, 24, 26, 201 Herman the Jew, 60, 228n69, 242n85 Herman of Tournai, 37, 145 Herman von Stahleck, 31, 39, 222n107 Herrad of Hohenbourg, 108 Hezekiah, King of Judah, 144 Hildegard of Bingen, 39, 118 Hildegund of Scho¨nau. See Joseph (monk) Hirsau congregation, 2, 23, 29, 180, 200; women in, 34–36, 46, 189 Hochstadt, 27–28 horror, 93, 100, 113–15, 185, 240n59 Hugh, abbot of Cluny, 134 Hugh of St. Victor, 16, 87, 93, 99; on sacraments, 73, 93, 95, 97–98, 162–63, 192–94; on sight, 98, 100; on signs, 93, 193; On the Sacraments (De sacramentis), 96, 163

Index Hussites, 27 hypocrisy, 166, 173 Ichtershausen, 38, 222n104; charters of, 38, 107 Idung of Pru¨fening, 23, 221n92 Igny, 172 imagination: as faculty of mind, 14–15, 94, 96, 215n60; developing faith through, 11, 13, 93, 122, 193, 240n45; of the transcendent, 1, 5, 8, 15, 148; sacramental, 8, 16–17, 193, 195, 197 infirmarian, 152–53, 155, 172, 175, 179–80, 184, 191, 194 Innocent III, Pope, 39, 66 Isaac of Stella, 109 Isaiah, Book of, 121–22, 144, 183 Istria, 29 Jacques de Vitry, 59, 248n45 Jerome, 104–5; Commentaries on Daniel, 104–5 Jews: accusations against, 114, 244n115; blindness of, 11, 122, 183, 193; conversion of, 113, 121–23, 129, 182–83, 194, 199. See also Herman the Jew Job, 49 John (prior), 52 John of Arezzo, 73, 202, 206 John the Baptist, 125, 154 Joseph (monk), 42–46, 173, 183, 189, 200, 217n34, 223n127, 223n131, 251n96 Judith, 42, 191 Jully, 37 justice: divine, 17, 119, 163–64, 195; trepidation about, 155, 169, 171, 184. See also Mary, Virgin Justice, Steven, 12–13, 214n45, 240n48, 243n93 Kitzingen, 20, 28, 34, 220n77 Klosterlangheim (village), 26–27, 48 Kulmbach, 27–28 Kunigunde, empress, 66 Kunigunde (Andechs), 25, 30 Kunizza of Giech, 30–31, 218n58–59 labor. See work Langheim, 20, 28, abbots of, 23, 26, 66; charters for, 31, 56, 218n51, 230n97; Engelhard at, 2, 21–22, 26, 32, 222n114; library at, 18, 73; patrons of, 29, 32–33, 48,

293

218n50, 219n65; property of, 27, 31, 49, 218n46; rural society around, 23, 60, 120, 143, 143, 248n44; stories set at, 23, 60, 63–64, 92, 113, 115, 132, 144, 174, 181, 217n21 Laon, 37, 88 Las Huelgas, 37; abbess of, 107 laity: contrasted with clerics, 2, 5–8, 103, 119, 137, 153, 195; stories about, 91, 125–28, 248n44; teaching to, 12, 14, 92, 124, 161, 168, 187, 196, 197. See also laybrothers; pastoral care Laval-Be´nite, 37 laybrothers: spiritual equality with monks, 23, 79, 117–18, 131, 140–42, 146, 155–58, 172, 196–97, 216n20; stories of, 6, 124–26, 216n20, 244n10; treated differently than monks, 107, 137, 139, 141, 178 lay sisters, 35 Leclercq, Jean, 5, 108, 212n15 Le Goff, Jacques, 50 Lichtenfels, 28, 48 Liebers, Andrea, 203, 205, 207 Lucius II, Pope, 38 Lund, 26 Macrobius, 76 Macy, Gary, 103 Magnum legendarium austriacum (MLA), 25, 50, 204 Mainz, 38 Malachai, Archbishop of Armagh, 125, 136 Marburg, 34 Markus, Robert, 75 Mary Magdalene, 126, 140, 203 Mary, Virgin: as abbot, 17, 42, 149–53, 157, 171; as priest, 116, 119, 190–92; Assumption of, 34, 147, 208, 221n86; Cistercian devotion to, 4, 131, 150, 238n20, 241n64, 249n77; dedication of monasteries to, 39, 135; Engelhard’s composition about, 2, 18, 33–34, 41, 64, 202; maternal sacrifice of, 115–18, 190, 229n86; miracles of, 18, 25, 149–50, 26, 199, 204; other visions of, 68, 78, 85, 98–99, 111, 233n32, 250n89, 257n6; recruits Cistercians, 61, 80–83; rewards Cistercians, 140–44, 148, 167, 250n88; scolds her monks, 61, 150–51, 157, 186, 191, 242n78; sense of justice, 152–53, 180. See also mercy; visions Matthew, Gospel of, 202 Maubuisson, 37

294

Index

Maximus the Confessor, 209 McGinn, Bernard, 196 McGuire, Brian Patrick, 50 Mechthild of Diessen, 32–33, 64, 191, 207; abbess of Edelstetten, 32, 36, 57; family of, 25–26, 29–30, 219n70–71; stories about, 42, 57, 97–99, 128, 144–45, 190, 250n89. See also Engelhard of Langheim; Vita Mathildis Mechthild, abbess of Kitzingen, 30, 33–34, 144, 201–2 memory, 29, 51–52, 54–56, 60, 63, 71, 88, 93–95, 111–12, 236n87, 236n97 mercy: of abbots, 176, 185–86; of God, 17, 119, 163–65, 167–70, 178–80, 184, 187, 197, 255n76; of Mary, 149–50, 176, 180, 190–91, 195 miracles, 68, 78, 202, 214n45, 232n25; as signs of sanctity, 42, 65–66, 77, 98, 128, 175, 188; creating sacred space, 52, 134, 136; eucharistic, 1, 78, 120; repairing mistakes, 172–75, 186; stories of, 12, 52, 65, 196, 225n19, 243n96; See also Joseph (monk); Mary, Virgin; visions Molesme, 37 Montreuil-les-Dames, 37 Morimond, 20, 55, 147, 201; abbot of, 23 mothers, 41–42, 116, 143–44, 174, 190. See also Mary, Virgin; queer imagery Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, 199–201, 205 Muri, 35 mysticism, 72, 78, 80, 88–89, 136, 196, 233n26 necromancy, 57–60, 82, 132–33, 157, 169, 175, 200, 227n60, 228n68 Neumann, Balthasar, 27 novices: difficulties with Cistercian life, 22, 43–44, 169–71, 174, 177, 190, 243n101; in Caesarius’s Dialogues, 100, 123, 129, 183; instruction of, 54, 90–91, 124, 127, 196 obedience, 142, 144, 150, 156, 170, 182, 248n48 Odo, abbot of Cluny, 53, 134 oral communication: by informants, 9, 56–58, 69, 112, 124, 247n40, 23n46; of stories around monasteries, 50–52, 60, 188, 197. See also textual communication; witnesses Orlamu¨nde (family), 29 Otto, prior of Langheim, 22, 174–76, 185 Otto I, bishop of Bamberg, 23, 29, 31, 48, 218n52, 218n58

Otto I, duke of Merania 29–30 Otto II, bishop of Bamberg, 30, 32, 219n63, 219n65 Oxford, 58–59 Paraclete, Oratory of the, 108 Paradyz, 201, 205 Paris: Bibliothe`que national de France, 199, 202, 209; schools in 7, 21–22, 59, 87, 95, 135, 197 Passau, 29 pastoral care: by abbots, 17, 167, 175–76, 180–81; of nuns 35–37, 41, 187; of the laity, 12, 162, 167–68, 195–97. See also Cistercian nuns Paul, Apostle, 85, 87, 98, 101–2, 178, 191, 197 Pelikan, Jaroslav, 103 penance, 136, 164, 169–70, 173, 175–76, 178, 188; as a sacrament, 7, 16–17, 159–63, 166–68, 187, 194. See also spiritual formation; work Peter, archbishop of Tarentaise, 172–73, 176, 191, 254n63 Peter Lombard, 176; on sacraments, 95, 162–63, 192, 194, 239n32; on signs, 168, 192; Sentences, 124, 252n15 Peter Monoculus (abbot), 172–73, 184 Petershausen, 35 Peter the Chanter: Verbum abbreviatum, 56 Peter the Venerable of Cluny, 135, 188, 239n31; De miraculis, 52, 244n115 Philip II, king of France, 29–30 Philip of Swabia, 26, 29, 220n76 Plassenburg, 28 Plasy, 20, 32 Pomerania, 26 Pons, abbot of Grandselve, 169–71, 174–78, 185–86, 191, 253n46 Poppo, 30–31 Poznan´, Biblioteka Raczyn´skich, 18, 34, 45, 64, 199–203, 205, 207 Prague, 32 prayer: as labor, 139, 146–48, 158, 192; as sacramental, 2, 136, 138–39, 148, 181, 192–93, 196; chanting psalms, 106–7, 110, 126, 154, 179–80; for the dead, 44, 57, 135, 149, 154–55, 157, 167, 177, 255n85; for the dying, 81, 172; gestures of, 106, 238n9; in monastic culture, 11, 102, 107, 134–35, 166, 176, 188, 196, 200, 250n88; in the economy of salvation, 6, 187; in the mass, 145, 248n57;

Index liturgical prayer, 1, 6, 104, 111, 132, 133; restoring faith, 84, 112, 114 Premonstratensian canons, 35, 152 priests, 120, 121, 123, 125, 189; administration of sacraments, 22, 86, 95, 102–3, 109, 120, 124, 187–88, 192; as skilled doctors, 10, 14, 163, 165, 183, 195; education of, 7, 92, 168; interactions with women, 2, 4, 14, 42, 108, 128, 184; mistakes of, 127, 166–67, 169, 173, 175–76, 180, 194–96; monastic, 6, 22, 103, 106–7, 155–56, 158, 160–61, 168, 172; as only male, 37, 41; as mediators of divine, 5–6, 153, 157, 186, 197; sacramental powers of, 1, 16, 78, 103–4, 111, 113, 115, 145, 158–59, 168, 190; unworthy, 91–92, 113–14, 126–27, 167, 172. See also Mary, Virgin; pastoral care; queer imagery Proverbs, Book of, 191 Pru¨fening, 2, 20, 23–25, 28, 48, 200, 205 Psalms, 121, 182, 184–86, 193; expressing contrition, 106–7, 110, 118, 164–65; sermons on, 109, 151–52; at death, 154–55, 171, 180. See also prayer Pseudo-Dionysus, 72 Pseudo-Matthew, Gospel of, 73, 202, 206 Purification of the Virgin, 116–17, 241n65 queer imagery: men as women/feminine, 1, 40–41, 43–45, 223n128; mothering monks, 17, 41–42, 118–19, 170–71, 190–92; women as men/masculine, 42, 44–45, 47, 191–92; women as priests, 107, 128. See also Joseph (monk); Mary, Virgin Regensburg, 23–24, 28–29, 48, 200, 205, 209 regular canons, 29, 80–83, 95, 131–33, 146–48, 152–53, 159; and women, 35–36, 38, 107–8. See also Diessen; He`rival; Premonstratensian canons; St. Victor Reinbert (monk), 174 religion (religio), 5, 11–13, 17, 38, 137, 195, 197–98, 214n45, 215n63, 258n13 religious studies, 4–5, 12, 133, 198, 212n16, 245n7 Revelation, Book of, 98 Rheims, 88 rhetoric: art of, 21, 75–76, 82; Engelhard’s, 24, 48–49, 61, 63, 196; persuasive, 16, 51, 68 Robert of Chaˆtillon, 135 Robert of Courc¸on, 59 Romans, Epistle to the, 85, 89

295

Rubin, Miri, 103 Rupert of Deutz, 36, 241n64 sacraments. See baptism; confession; Eucharist; faith; imagination; penance; prayer; priests; signs; textual communication; work Saydnaya, 202 Schaffhausen, 20, 23, 180–81, 186 Schmitt, Jean-Claude, 12, 50 schools: culture of, 1–2, 4–5, 21–22, 50, 228n68; intellectual exchange with monasteries, 6–7, 10, 73, 161, 163, 167, 196, 231n1, 231n5; monks opposed to, 46, 93–95, 109; syllogisms of, 5, 6, 72, 86–87, 99, 195; theological ideas developed at, 71, 103, 142, 159–60, 162, 192, 212n13; urban, 6, 96. See also Abelard, Peter; Bamberg; Hugh of St. Victor; Paris Schwarzer, Joseph, 201–2, 207 Second Crusade, 31 Serlo of Wilton, 58–60, 65, 67, 228n61 sight, 2, 4, 8–9, 16, 102, 112, 114–15, 196; appearance and reality, 1, 9–10, 15, 139, 148, 152, 182; typologies of, 71–100 sign, 2, 4, 14, 144, 178, 180, 192–93, 214n52; interpretation of, 10, 15–16, 71–100, 103, 117, 119, 124–25, 129, 136, 139, 145, 153–54, 159, 181, 184; sensual/material, 1, 10, 16, 71–100, 109, 122, 144, 148, 155; verbal, 44, 75–78, 86, 95–96; visual, 9–11, 65, 71–100, 102–3, 114, 122–23, 129, 139, 159, 161–62, 175, 182. See also Eucharist; sight; visions Silesia, 29 Simeon, 115–17 Simon, abbot of Sorø, 233n35; as a sign, 99–100, 153; confirmation of tale, 67, 80, 217n22; visions of, 80–83, 97, 154, 175, 192, 200 sin, 7, 10 , 137, 162–64, 167–70; hidden, 57, 152, 159–61, 165–66, 175–76, 178, 180, 182–85, 194–95, 197; fewer among Cistercians, 137–38, 157, 170; of singularity, 42, 156, 166, 177, 194; symbols of, 58, 81, 127. See also discernment; priests Slovenia, 26, 29, 31 Smirnova, Victoria, 63 Song of Songs, sermons on: on contrition 110, 164, 184; on encountering Christ 94, 97; senses in, 94–95, 235n60; sermons, 41, 150,

296

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Song of Songs, sermons on (continued ) 223n128, 253n; textual community of, 45, 136, 190. See also Bernard of Clairvaux Sophia, 30, 34 Speculum virginum, 36 spiritual formation, 1, 103–4, 135–36, 187–88; as a process, 12, 17, 43, 99, 109, 146, 158, 170, 198; as critical to interpretation, 10, 75, 95–96, 111, 158, 198; of self, 6, 7, 89, 193; through discipline, 11, 63, 97, 100, 149, 159, 192; through penance, 12, 138, 161, 163–64; through personal example, 8, 42, 45, 63–65, 174, 192; through stories, 2, 35, 46, 50–52, 63, 133, 181–83, 186, 194; through work, 142–43, 145 Springiersbach, 35 St. Antoine-des-Champs, 37 St. Blasien, 35 St. Emmeram, 116 St. Theodor at Bamberg, 20, 28, 32–34, 39–40, 220n77, 222n114 Stephen of Bourbon, 59 Steps of Humility and Pride, 165, 177, 182, 201, 231n, 248n. See also Bernard of Clairvaux Sticˇna, 20, 26, 217n41 Stockwell, Peter, 14 Swabia, 35 Tambach, 27–28 Tart, 37, 221n96 textual communication: as sacramental, 145, 192; epistolary presence through, 49, 55, 57; didactic presence through, 8, 10, 17, 21, 50, 69, 181, 213n32; oral character of, 16, 46, 50–55, 60–64, 69–70, 160, 181, 186 textual culture, 45, 55–57, 61, 69–70 theologians, 11–12, 16, 60, 74, 109, 183, 197; monastic, 14, 72, 86, 97, 99, 119; scholastic, 7, 10, 71, 150, 160–61, 167, 192, 195 theology, 5–6, 21, 77, 87, 103, 124, 162, 190; sacramental, 8, 16, 75, 89, 93–95, 159–62, 166; vernacular, 4–6, 17, 196–98, 212n15 Thirty Years’ War, 27 Thuringia, 34 Toulouse, 7 Trebnitz, 20, 33–34 Trieb, 27–28 Truhendigen (family), 29 Turner, Mark, 111 Ulrich (scribe), 200

Valroy, 172 Van Engen, John, 11–12 Van ’t Spijker, Ineke, 186 vernacular language, 23, 60–61, 196 virtue: growth in 15, 65, 117, 129, 214n44; of the community, 129, 137, 155–57, 160; shown by individuals, 21–22, 49, 56, 117, 137, 156, 174–75, 177, 184; taught by stories, 51–54, 63, 188. See also justice; mercy; obedience vision. See sight visions: typology of, 51–53, 232n25; of Eucharist, 1, 16, 42, 78, 84–85, 91–93, 101–30, 193–94; stories about 13, 16, 27, 58, 71, 113, 126, 147, 151, 177, 231n2; women’s, 6, 137. See also Gotschalk of Langheim; sight; Simon of Sorø; Vita Mathildis Vita Mathildis: composition of, 26, 66, 74, 201; descriptions of religious women, 36, 42, 56–57, 128, 144, 191; later use of, 33, 64, 219–20n70–72; letter of dedication, 32, 217n28; manuscripts of, 201, 216n3, 220n71; visions in, 97–99, 100, 190, 250n89. See also Mechthild of Diessen Vitae patrum, 51, 56, 60, 112–14, 117–18 Volmar, 21–22, 68, 174–75, 191, 222n114 Waddell, Chrysogonus, 37 Wagner, Heinrich, 38, 222n112 Walderbach, 24 weaving, 21, 37, 48, 60, 143–45 Wechterswinkel, 2, 15, 17, 20, 28, 34, 38–39, 222n113; abbess, 41, 202–4, 209; charters and cartulary, 38–40, 107; daughter houses, 32–34, 38–40, 107, 222n104; reception of Engelhard’s writings, 4, 16, 54, 56, 65–67, 129–30, 160, 182, 185–87, 189, 197–98. See also Cistercian nuns; Engelhard of Langheim; Engelhard’s book of exempla William of Hirsau, 35 William of Malmesbury, 56; Gesta regnum, 56 William of St. Thierry, 90, 135, 140; De sacramento altaris, 108; Enigma of Faith, 88; Golden Letter, 110; Mirror of Faith, 88–89; on faith, 73, 83, 87–89, 93, 99; on sacraments, 73, 89, 99, 239n32; on sight, 72–73, 83, 87–88, 93, 97, 99; on visions, 89, 94; opposition to the schools, 83, 86, 100 Williams, David, 107 witnesses, 65–69; direct witnesses, 22, 74, 111, 127, 230n95, 230n97; evidentiary culture, 8, 50, 55, 65–66, 69–70, 79; informants as, 9,

Index 56–57, 59, 61, 64, 229n78; testimony, 10, 33, 53, 56–57, 101, 110, 159, 182, 231n113. See also oral communication women, religious: double houses, 35, 37–38, 108; monastic separation, 36, 45, 189, 221n92. See also Cistercian nuns; gender; priests; regular canons work, 35, 156, 200, 247n33; as monastic practice, 135, 139–42, 145, 158, 177, 181, 192;

297

as sacramental, 2, 138–39, 143–44, 146, 148, 181, 196; hired laborers, 60, 141–42; penitential, 104, 139–41, 148. See also prayer; spiritual formation Wu¨lflingen, 27–28 Wu¨rzburg, 23, 27–29; bishop of, 31–33, 39 Ziegler, Charlotte, 203 Zwettl, 20; Stiftsbibliothek, 25, 199–200, 203

acknowledgments

Writing is a solitary endeavor, but it takes a community to make a book. I am grateful to a multitude of institutions, colleagues, friends, and family members who have supported, challenged, corrected, and encouraged me over these many years. The Humanities Institute at the University of Texas at Austin and the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, provided ideal environments as I began to think about this project. At the Institute for Advanced Study, I was honored to be the George William Cottrell, Jr. Member, and was supported as well by a Faculty Research Assignment from the Graduate School at the University of Texas. As I worked on this book, the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas awarded me a Humanities Research Grant that helped cover research costs, the College of Liberal Arts and the Provost’s Office provided a College Research Assignment and a Special Faculty Assignment that gave me uninterrupted time to write, and the History Department’s Institute for Historical Studies provided a teaching reduction and workshops for discussing my work with colleagues. Finally, this book has been published with the assistance of a subvention grant from the President’s Office at the University of Texas at Austin, and I am grateful for this support. Historical research is impossible without libraries and without the librarians who recognize that collections of physical books and manuscripts remain important. It is always a joy to work with manuscripts, and I would like to acknowledge the manuscript departments and special collections at the Raczyn´ski Library in Poznan´, the Bibliothe`que Nationale in Paris, the Stiftsbibliothek at Zwettl, and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich and their helpful librarians and archivists. I am grateful to the Bibliothe`que Municipale in Dijon and the Raczyn´ski Library in Poznan´ for permission to reproduce images from manuscripts in their collections. At the Perry-Castan˜eda Library at the University of Texas, Shiela Winchester has been a friend and a

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support, and the Interlibrary Services staff fulfilled my many requests with patience and efficiency. I have had many fruitful and thought-provoking conversations with fellow medievalists as I worked on this book. I treasure my memories of the Institute for Advanced Study, especially my discussions with Caroline Walker Bynum and Giles Constable. I greatly enjoyed learning from the community of scholars assembled there; they included Felice Lifshitz, Karl Shoemaker, Katherine Tachau, Peter Arnade, and Celia Chazelle. For an idyllic year, we wandered in and out of each other’s apartments, chasing children and sharing food, drink, and ideas with equal enthusiasm. I want to thank Brian Patrick McGuire, who was always willing to talk about Cistercian stories; Line Cecilie Engh, who introduced me to conceptual blending (and to Rome); Fiona Griffiths, whose careful reading and insights made this a much better book; and Constant Mews whose many helpful suggestions sharpened my arguments. I also want to remember John Baldwin, who found time every August to talk about medieval history while watching the waves and the fog on Gotts Island. Anna Taylor read the entire manuscript and offered critiques that made me laugh, Jonathan Lyon shared his knowledge of the AndechsMerania and the genealogical chart he created, and Deeana Klepper joined me in puzzling out how to live concurrently as a scholar of history and a scholar of religion. I am grateful as well to Jerry Singerman and Ruth Mazo Karras whose patient encouragement helped me keep moving forward on this project; to Noreen O’Connor-Abel and Susan Fleshman who helped with the editing and the production of the manuscript; and to Gordie Thompson who made the maps. I belong to two wonderful departments at the University of Texas. One of the advantages of starting an academic department is that you get to choose and hire your colleagues. I am proud of the intellectual community in the Department of Religious Studies, and I have learned much from my conversations and friendships with the faculty and graduate students. I have also been fortunate in my colleagues in the Department of History. I wish especially to thank the premodern historians with whom I have worked for many years—Alison Frazier, Julie Hardwick, Brian Levack, Cynthia Talbot, and Susan Deans-Smith have read grant applications, conference papers, and chapters, and they have offered friendship, encouragement, and lots of good advice. Jacob Doss, Brad King, Nathan Leach, and Steven Lundy also read and edited chapters and helped with myriad tasks, including the index, and I am grateful to them as well.

Acknowledgments

301

Over the many years that I worked on this book, I raised two sons, founded a department, and established a graduate program. These endeavors also took a community. Others may be better at balancing their research with administrative demands and the endless writing of memos, letters, and reports; alas, I spent many summers unraveling and re-forming what I had produced the previous summer while my family waited patiently for more than a decade for me to emerge from my intellectual wanderings. My mother did not live to see the finished book, but she always wanted to hear about my work and my stories. My sons, Daniel and Matthew, are now launched on their own lives with their own interests and obsessions, but I continue to cherish their curiosity and their kindness, and I will turn my office back into a bedroom should either ever need it. My husband, Andrew Weinberg, listened to my confusions and fixed my sentences but, more importantly, he got me out of my office and into the garden, off on a walk, camping in the mountains, or kayaking on the ocean. Over these many decades, we have raised our children together and we have shared our interests and our dreams. To my family, I dedicate this book. Some of the ideas in this book first appeared in articles and essays. An analysis of Joseph of Scho¨nau appeared as “Real Men and Imaginary Women: Engelhard of Langheim Considers a Woman in Disguise” (Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, 78 [2003]: 1184–1213); I have revised my interpretation in Chapter 1 and also in “Assigned Female at Death: Joseph of Scho¨nau and the Disruption of Medieval Gender Binaries,” forthcoming in Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, ed. Blake Gutt and Alicia Spencer-Hall (Amsterdam University Press). I discussed the story of the necromancers in Chapter 2 in “Making Cistercian Exempla or, The Problem of the Monk Who Wouldn’t Talk” (Cistercian Studies Quarterly 46.1 [2011]: 45– 66), and I used an analysis of the story in Chapter 5 about Mary and the chalice of sweat in “Labor: Insights from a Medieval Monastery,” published in Why the Middle Ages Matter: Medieval Light on Modern Injustice, ed. Celia Chazelle, Simon Doubleday, Felice Lifshitz, and Amy G. Remensnyder (Abingdon, UK: Routledge Press, 2011), 106–20. I discuss the stories of the weaving mother and of the monk and the dragon, also in Chapter 5, in “Marriage, Maternity, and the Formation of a Sacramental Imagination: Stories for Cistercian Monks and Nuns Around the Year 1200,” published in Marriage Symbolism: Cognition and Society in the Premodern Christian West, ed. Line Cecilie Engh (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2019), 203–

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29. I want to acknowledge Speculum and the University of Chicago Press, Amsterdam University Press, Routledge Press, and the Cistercian Studies Quarterly as I reuse and rework this previously published material. I also want to acknowledge Cornell University Press for permission to use and modify the genealogical table from Jonathan R. Lyon, Princely Brothers and Sisters: The Sibling Bond in German Politics, 1100–1250 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 182, which appears as Figure 5 in this book.