Now that back-to-school sales are the order of the day, and we here at Immaculate Heart of Mary School are gearing up for the beginning of our academic year, it is apt that we turn our attention to a great educational figure in Church history, the too-little-known Saint Rabanus Maurus.
Called by Pope Benedict XVI, “a truly extraordinary figure of the Latin West,” Rabanus Maurus Magnentius may be known to some readers as a theologian cited by such later medieval theologians as Peter Lombard, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure. Those who have spent any significant time in certain volumes of Cornelius a Lapide’s Great Commentary, will have come across some of that Jesuit scholar’s citations to Rabanus Maurus as an authoritative Biblical exegete. Devotees of Dom Gueranger’s Liturgical Year may recall that learned Abbot citing Rabanus as an authority on the Liturgy. Anyone reading the brief commentaries in old missals or prayer books may have seen reference to Rabanus as the most likely composer of the Veni Creator Spiritus, that great liturgical hymn to the Holy Ghost that played such a role in the deeper conversions of Saints Clare and Teresa of Ávila — at the mere singing of which, Saint Lutgarde of Aywières was literally lifted two cubits above the church floor on the feast of Pentecost.
But who is this figure with the strange name — Rabanus Maurus? And why should he be studied in our own day?
In order to set the stage for the answers to these questions, let us first consider his time. He was born in 780 and died in 856. He is therefore squarely situated in that historical era of European intellectual and cultural progress known as the Carolingian Renaissance, named after Blessed Charlemagne, a.k.a. Charles the Great or Carolus Magnus — hence Carolingian. (Alternatively, the word Carlovingian is sometimes employed.)
It was Christmas Day in the year 800 that Charles, the son and heir of the Frankish king, Pepin the Short, was crowned by Pope Saint Leo III to be Roman Emperor, much to the chagrin of the then-reigning Roman Emperor in Constantinople. With twenty children, choosing an heir was concern for Charlemagne, for it was not a forgone conclusion that the eldest son would succeed him. Louis the Pious, a.k.a., Louis the Fair or Louis the Debonaire, was made first his co-emperor in 813, and then, his successor as Emperor at Charlemagne’s death in 814.
Fast forward to the year 843, at which point the treaty of Verdun divided the Carolingian Empire among Louis the Pious’ three sons: East Francia, which went to Louis II, called “the German”; West Francia, which went to Charles II (“the Bald”); and Middle Francia, which went to Lothair I. East Francia would eventually become the Holy Roman German Empire; West Francia, the Kingdom of France; and Middle Francia, Italy (excluding, of course, the southern part of the boot, which was politically and culturally Greek and firmly in the Eastern Roman Empire). Among the Carolingians, the succession from one generation to the next was far from what we modern Americans would call an “orderly and peaceful transition of power”; internal intrigues, revolts, and even outright wars were sometimes fought, pitting son against father and brother against brother.
Our subject, Rabanus Maurus, was instrumental in trying to make peace between contending parties, and making sure that the rightful rulers practiced Christian virtue in handling these disputes. I have taken the liberty to call him “Saint” here, as this holy man is venerated as a saint or blessed in the Dioceses of Fulda, Mainz, Limburg and Breslau — with a feast day of February 4. (My authority for this claim is the same Wednesday audience of Pope Benedict XVI I have already cited.)
Born of aristocratic parents at Mainz, in what would become during his lifetime the Eastern part of Charlemagne’s empire, and then — still during his lifetime — East Francia, Saint Rabanus’ life spanned the reigns of Charlemagne, his son, Louis the Pious, and his son, Louis the German.
The Renaissance German abbot and polymath, Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), wrote a very brief and laudatory biography of Saint Rabanus that may be read in full in the scholarly front matter of the newly published book, Saints of the Old Testament: Rabanus Maurus’ Commentary on Ruth, Judith, and Esther. (That volume, only available on Amazon, presents original translations of Rabanus’ commentaries on those Old-Testament books done by the scholarly gentlemen who run Scriptorium Press.) The fact that this learned man of the Renaissance spoke so highly of Rabanus not only as a holy man but as a scholar is significant; looking back to the ninth century for great intellectual accomplishment was not the fashion in his day.
A quick overview of his life may be glimpsed from the Matins lesson that is proper to Berlin Diocese, made available by Gregor Kollmorgen on the New Liturgical Movement website:
Rabanus, surnamed Maurus, born of humble lineage [see below] among the Buchonian people of Germany, devoted himself to the reading and meditation of sacred scriptures from his youth. As a young man, he applied himself to the Rule of Saint Benedict in the very city of Fulda where he was born and raised. There, he advanced remarkably in both conduct and knowledge, and he worked so that others might also advance there as well. He established a public school in the monastery of Fulda, which — as abbot — he excellently promoted with such benefit to the religious community that under his leadership and discipline, their renown and fame spread throughout Europe. He was adorned with the title of Doctor of the Church by Saint Albert the Great due to his extraordinary sanctity of life and incomparable knowledge of the scriptures.
Yet eventually, he had some religious adversaries who claimed that he was so focused on learning that he neglected temporal matters. To appease their ire, he left the monastery and withdrew to Emperor Louis the Pious. However, the meek man, not seeking his own interests, left his abbey without honor. But for Fulda, God repaid him with Mainz, which was left without a pastor after the passing of Archbishop Otgar, where he shone all the brighter from a higher place. He solely focused on preserving the integrity of faith and reforming the conduct of both clergy and people. He convened two synods, one provincial and the other national, and in them condemned Gottschalk, the heresiarch with erroneous beliefs about predestination, and established many other measures for the church’s decorum and benefit. He also enacted very strict laws for the immunity of the church, which had been undermined at the time by ministers of secular rulers, obtaining their ratification from the emperor, as the advocate of the holy Church of God, through a synodical letter sent to him.
He was always carried by remarkable mercy towards the poor, a virtue he exhibited in the year eight hundred and fifty when a severe famine oppressed Germany, providing sustenance daily for more than three hundred people, excluding those who regularly ate in his presence. Exhausted by continuous labors for the glory of God, he passed to eternal life on the fourth day of February in the year of Our Lord eight hundred and fifty-six, in the ninth year of his pontificate. His sacred body was buried in the church of St. Alban in Mainz, and with the authority of the apostolic see, was solemnly transferred by Cardinal Albert, archbishop of Mainz, along with the relics of Saint Maximus, to Halle in Saxony.
It is unknown to me why that liturgical lesson refers to his “humble lineage” when his parents, Waluram and Waltrata, were aristocrats who had given quite a bit of land, as well as their son, to the Abbey of Fulda. Be that as it may, Rabanus was an oblate, that is, a young boy who was offered to the monks to be raised and educated by them. He would eventually become a monk and then abbot of that great monastery that was founded by Saint Sturmius (also: Sturm or Sturmi), the disciple of Saint Boniface, Apostle of Germany. While Fulda’s reputation as a beacon of learning began before Rabanus, he maintained and augmented his monastery’s intellectual accomplishments.
His nickname, Maurus, was given to him by none other than Abbot Alcuin, that giant of Carolingian learning who was Blessed Charlemagne’s right-hand-man in all things pertaining to study and scholarly formation. Alcuin gave Rabanus the name for one of two reasons: either because his student was dark complected (Maurus was the word for “Moor”), or because the elder monk looked affectionately upon his promising disciple and saw their relationship as paralleling that between Saint Benedict and his young oblate disciple, Saint Maurus. Perhaps both reasons figured in; after all, Alcuin was a poet known to have a sense of humor and probably would have enjoyed such word play.
If the reader is entirely unacquainted with the figure of Alcuin, the Carolingian Renaissance will mean nothing to him. The Alcuin Study Center encapsulates their eponymous hero in these words:
Alcuin of York (735ish-804) is a giant on whose shoulders all of Western education stands, whether we realize it or not. He was a teacher of teachers as well as a curator and cultivator of culture. He developed the use of lower case letters and the alphabet essentially as we know it today. He revived and standardized the classical liberal arts that have been a conduit of learning for higher education for more than 1200 years. He spoke truth to power, insisting that rulers must be men of character, wisdom, and mercy. He taught and encouraged women students at a time when women were not supposed to be educated. He corrected Jerome’s Latin Bible (the Vulgate) to give the people a reliable copy of God’s word. He wrote poetry, produced books, built libraries, and invented the question mark. And we know from his letters to his friends—who were many and faithful—that he had a fantastic sense of humor.
Alcuin wanted nothing more than to cultivate the moral imagination in each of his fellow human beings and equip them to flourish.
Saint Rabanus Maurus was initially sent to Alcuin to learn the art of poetry, and the result of this particular study was a work he wrote on the Holy Cross (In honorem sanctae crucis) in “figured poetry,” that is, poetry written in shapes so that the result is both verbal and iconic. A sample of it may be seen here — and a translation read here.
But it is as a Scriptural commentator that Rabanus is most known, and it is no wonder that his commentaries have made their way into the work of later authors. His exegesis appears frequently in the Catena Aurea of Saint Thomas Aquinas, and is a major source for the Glossa Ordinaria, which has been called “the most popular and influential biblical commentary of the Middle Ages.” Besides these works and that of the already mentioned Jesuit Biblicist, Cornelius a Lapide, another depository of Rabanus’ work is an amazing online resource I have just learned of, the Catena Bible. In it, some hundreds of verse-by-verse commentaries of Maurus may be found (click here for some of his commentaries on that site, “hand-picked” by Google).
I asked the question, above, why should we study him today. Perhaps the best reason is to see what his approach was to the Scriptures and how his works were occasioned. His commentaries on Ruth, Judith, and Esther were written to give practical advice to Carolingian rulers in the midst of the social tumults I mentioned above. He read the Scriptures both in literal and spiritual senses. The latter gives us not only the allegorical sense, wherein New-Testament realities are shown to be contained in Old-Testament types and figures, but also the moral sense, which provides us with a practical guide for daily living and growth in virtue. As the translators of that volume inform us:
The commentary on Judith and Esther was completed in about 834 and sent to Empress Judith of Bavaria (r. 819-840), the second wife of Louis the Pious (r. 813-840), along with a dedicatory letter by Rabanus. In this letter, Rabanus explains that the purpose of the commentary is above all a practical one: the zealous and sagacious Empress is to model herself after the exemplars of Judith and Esther in order to overcome both her spiritual and physical enemies.
Consulting Holy Writ — and the Old Testament, at that — for practical advice amid life-threatening dynastic upheavals might not strike the modern man as most practical thing to do, but it is a wonderful illustration of just how supernatural was the world view of the Catholics of the Carolingian age.
Another thing we might glean from Rabanus is a more vertical view of the cosmos. Among his myriad works is one on natural science called De rerum naturis, which he wrote to help the clergy gain a deeper knowledge of the natural world so that they might better understand the obscure metaphors in the Bible. Our Lord descended from heaven to “open [His] mouth in parables” and “utter things hidden from the foundation of the world” (Matt. 13:35), but the Father, in a manner of speaking, hid those things within the fabric of the world itself, and sent His Son to show what had been hidden. If Saint Rabanus wanted his readers to understand the fabric of nature better, it was so that those “hidden things” might be better understood.
Lastly, it should be mentioned that Rabanus had a great zeal both for orthodoxy and the orthopraxy that flows from it. When a fellow oblate of his from Fulda, Gottschalk by name, came up with a kind of proto-Calvinist idea of two-fold predestination, it was Archbishop Rabanus of Mainz who summoned a regional synod to condemn the error. (The Gottschalk here is Gottschalk of Orbais, not to be confused with the pianist and composer from New Orleans, Louis Moreau Gottschalk!) Contrary to Gottschalk’s errors, Rabanus wrote,
For they say that his predestination brings it about that no person predestined to life is able to fall into death, and no person predestined to death can in any way recover for life. But God, the author of everything and creator of natures, is the cause of the ruin and destruction of no one, but is the origin of the salvation of many.
Saint Rabanus also defended the use of images against the iconoclast heresy which principally affected the East. When it crept into the Western Church, it was so thoroughly rebuked that it barely got a foothold in Occident.
Spend some time with Saint Rabanus Maurus yourself and see how it is that this holy educator came to be known as “the teacher of Germany.”
