medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 04:54 PM 5/25/2004 -0700, Phyllis wrote:
>Guinizo (d. c. 1050) Guinizo was a Spaniard who became a monk at
>Montecassino, and then was a hermit nearby after the monastery was
>raided and largely destroyed.
1) Our sources for G. are abbot Desiderius II's _Dialogi de miraculis
sancti Benedicti_, 1.6-7; Peter the Deacon's _Ortus et vita iustorum
cenobii Casinensis_, 30; and the _Chronica monasterii Casinensis_, 3.48
(this portion also by Peter the Deacon and closely related to the chapter
in his _Ortus et vita_). Peter calls G. Guinizo (and in one instance,
apparently, Uuinizo). Desiderius (in many library catalogues, pope Victor
III) calls him Gumizo. All three texts have been edited recently (or
relatively recently) by paleographically competent scholars working from
closely contemporary witnesses (in the case of the _Ortus et vita_, from
Peter's own autograph); it is unlikely that they have erred here. As a
guess, I would say that our saint's name really was Gumizo and that Peter
either misread this unusual name or, writing as he did for a larger
audience, intentionally normalized it to Guinizo.
2. Standard Cassinese history knows four destructions of the abbey: by the
Lombards in about 577, by Muslim raiders in 883, by a terrible earthquake
in 1349, and by Allied bombardment in 1944. Phyllis' summary refers to the
period of Pandulf IV's control of the abbey in the 1030s, when its treasure
was removed and most of the monks were reassigned to a daughter house in
Capua, whose prefect (a Calabrian Greek named Basil) subsequently was named
abbot of Montecassino by Pandulf and proceeded to manage the place through
its lay staff. Pandulf's impoverishment and partial depopulation of the
abbey, his reassigning many of its holdings to his Norman mercenaries, and
the activities of the hated Basil were roundly denounced by the abbey's
writers from Desiderius through Leo of Ostia to Peter the Deacon. But the
same writers make it clear that the abbey's buildings were left standing
and that the place continued to function, albeit (in their view) more as an
estate than as a house of religion. To call this extended exploitation by
the local territorial potentate (the prince of Capua) a raid is
misleading. To say that the monastery was "largely destroyed" is
untrue. In contemporary terms, it was, or was said to have been, repurposed.
At 05:53 PM 5/25/2004 -0500, I wrote:
>prior to the eleventh-century Norman conquest of the duchy of
>Benevento.
Er, _principality_ of Benevento. Which at this point was only a shade of
its former self.
Best again,
John Dillon
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