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medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture From: John Wickstrom <[log in to unmask]> > Christopher, thank you for the very useful comments. I would also vote for a mountain lion (skin), perhaps taken, as you suggest, on the way down from LeMans. well, i didn't say he picked it up on the way *down*. since the illumination depicts a scene in France, he might have found it on his way back North. too close to call, given the somewhat skimpy evidence at hand. >Though there are those spots... the mountain cats of the Alps being extinct, low these many centuries, who knows what they looked like? indeed, this may be the only extant painting of one. >The matter of the "scales" or measures for bread and wine have their origins in the Rule of Benedict. Chapters 39 and 40 specify a "libra" of bread and a hemina" of wine per monk per day. have to brush up on my Reguala reading, obviously. Asculta, filii... etc. > I'm particularly grateful for the comments about Harderadus. The term in the Vita is indeed 'vice-Dominus' (ch. 16 in the AASS edition). i must not be looking at the right AASS vita --it's in ch. III in the one i have (by St. Fausto), and doesn't follow your text exactly. there's another mention of him --and his loverly wife Cćcilia-- in caput VII. > I could not find the term elsewhere in Carolingian sources the VICEDOMINUS entry in DuCange runs to 12 columns and gave me a terrific headache when i tried to wade through it some years ago. my memory is that there are some mentions of the term as early as the early 9th c. (though the function of the office back then was not at all clear), but the hay-day for it was the 11th-12th cc. there is, btw, a _Gestis Pontificum Cenomanensii_ --which i've never read-- which might have something on your guy H. >and so decided on "chancellor" as a sort of equivalent... not a good choice. nothing "chancelloresque" about vidames, as best i can make out. they weren't scholards. >a bad choice considering the issues of clerical status it raises. among other reasons. >Perhaps this text provides one of the earlier uses of that term, which you say is traceable to the 11th c. i was speaking only of Chartres, for that date. actually, my memory is that there is some (single) mention of a Vidame at Chartres in the 10th c., but the historical horizon for the office doesn't come up until the mid-11th at the earliest. >(The VM is from the 860s, probably). DuCange should note it, then. not much got through that guy's fine net. i've come across some amazingly obscure references there. nothing like Sublimation to enhance Obscurity. >So what sort of English term could be used to approximate this idea? "vidame" the only term which i've ever seen, and the only one which works. there were German vicedominae (DuCange again), but i don't know if the backwards English had them. if they did, "vidame" is the word which the secondary literature in English would use, i should think. >Your description of this office's functions is exactly the sort of work that H. does in the text: not in the vita i'm looking at, apparently. >serving as a liaison with the royal court in the monks' early days in France, and arranging for a purchase of land when Maurus's original deal with the bishop of LeMans falls through DuCange quoted some texts which lumped the vidames in with the provosts, i think; which would stand to reason, if the guy's main job had to do with the property in the episcopal _fisc_. your text might be one of the very few which mention specific tasks done by a vidame. they are generally thought of as rather "mysterious" characters --due to the lack of suchlike appearances in the texts. usually, they just appear in witness lists, among the entourage of a bishop or within a group of chapter dignataries. in Chartres the vidames had a "tower" in the bishop's close, just off the apse of the cathedral. there is a 19th c. study of the vidames, in French, but i've never seen it. >(another odd problem, assuming the whole life is a fiction by Glanfeuil's extraordinary abbot Odo, fl. 860s-80s.) as i said, the only life i can find in the on-line ed. of the AASS is by this guy St. Fausto. > Also the Glanfeuil charters were published in the early part of the last century, might be on the http://www.gallica.bnf.fr site, then. >though there are probably no legitimate charters from before about 900. always a problem. those Norsemen and their matches made a pretty clean sweep of everything north of the Loire, apparently, trying their very best to bring some Light to the Dark Ages. >I didn't know about the publishing of the Fossés material. Do you have a reference for that? i have a "firm" memory of having purchased a volume of it from the Brepols boys at the 'zoo some years ago, but can't seem to find it on the Brepols site at all. so much for my 'firm' memories which, more and more often, are turning out to be made of sand at low tide. no trace of the damned thing on the net, either. yet i am *sure* that it was...... i'll have to look at home, see if i can turn it up. sorry about that. c ********************************************************************** To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME to: [log in to unmask] To send a message to the list, address it to: [log in to unmask] To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion to: [log in to unmask] In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to: [log in to unmask] For further information, visit our web site: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html