Bruno of Querfurt

It has been many years since the celebrations of the anniversaries of important events from the
history of Poland gave the opportunity to start archeological excavations. Unfortunately lack
of necessary knowledge and practical research skills, lead in many cases to the researches in the
places, which are not involved with the anniversary or which give peculiar results. It was seen
during excavations in project ADALBERTUS dedicated to anniversary of the thousand years
of death of bishop Wojciech in Prussia, it was made between 1994–1996 in Chełmno land and
on the area, which is next to the south part of Druzno Lake. The location of the researches
was connected with acceptance of doubtful pomesanian thesis about bishop Adalbertus mission.
The researches were on fort hills and early medieval settlements on the first area and fort
hills, settlement, cemetery and dikes on the second area. The similar thing was with excavations
from 2000 and 2003 lead on the Saint Laurentius Hill in Stara Łomża, which in modern tradition
were concerned with bishop Brunon of Querfurt, whose one thousand years of death
anniversary was in 1009.
The researchers didn’t even try to connect the researched area of Chełmno Land with
the tour of mission of bishop Wojciech. The dikes and cemetery on the second area were far
chronologically from that mission too, and the results of opinion poll researches of two fort
hills in Kwietniewo, despite existing in early medieval, do not let us connect them with Cholinum
of Passion of Tegernsee.
Similar thing is with the excavations in Stara Łomża. A late-medieval and modern church
cemetery were exposed here, beside that there were found few remains of destroyed by them of
an Early-Medieval settlement. The remains of an Early–Medieval rotunda appeared to be only
illusion. Furthermore the researches of historians – Grzegorz Białuński and mine, undertake
on other occasion showed that the connection between the church of st. Laurentius in Stara
Łomża and the person of bishop Brunon is only a fiction. The chronicle of M. Spangenberg
from 1590 and its later edition, that was supposed to be that source, doesn’t contain such information.
In both cases archeological researches were a failure. The results didn’t bring anything
new to schedule of the missions, they just couldn’t.

This book is a revised dissertation concerned with the three oldest hagiographies of St. Adalbert of Prague (BHL 37-40), treated as vehicles and voices in the debate about the new saint and the world around him. The study comprises of three chapters.The initial part is a critical analysis of the textual tradition of the first two lives. For the anonymous so-called “First Life” a particular attention is given to problems of authorship, writing milieu and chronology of the three extant redactions. For the so-called „Second Life” by Bruno of Querfurt the concern is mainly with the form of the bulkier first redaction, the character of later insertions and hagiographer’s method.The second chapter is entirely devoted to differences between worldviews of hagiographers, charting their polemics and pinpointing controversies through close reading of texts in all of the extant redactions of the first two lives. A special attention was being paid the the idea of martyrdom as a main organizing device.The last chapter is a discussion of the so-called Passio s. Adalperti martiris (from Tegernsee in Bavaria). Beginning with a codicological analysis of the two extant manuscripts, this part is concerned not only with the history of the text and the problem of authorship but also with the author’s erudition, his method of constructing the presented world, and his stance toward the previous accounts.

(NOTE: Inevitably, this thesis deals with some fairly specialised topics, and the work of Ian Wood or James Palmer is a far better place to begin when dealing with many of the issues it covers. This is especially true of the section on Rimbert. I am convinced that the methodology section and the chapter on Adam of Bremen touch on some rather clever (if wholly unoriginal) ideas, but I am equally convinced that I have failed to do anything more than hint at these ideas and their implications. Two of Bruno of Querfurt’s three works are now available in translation and are well worth reading. Sadly, there is currently a dearth of Anglophone scholarship on him; Darius Baronas, Marina Miladinov, Cristian-Nicolae Gaşpar, and Ian Wood are some notable exceptions. But there is so much more to be said about Bruno, despite his unforgivably impenetrable Latin.)

This thesis explores the varying ways in which otherness was imagined and constructed in two clusters of medieval missionary texts: Rimbert’s Vita Anskarii and Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, from the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen; and Bruno of Querfurt’s Passio Sancti Adalberti episcopi et martyris, Vita vel passio Benedicti et Iohannis sociorumque suorum and Epistola ad Heinricum Regem.

Missionaries and the authors who described their work were uniquely concerned with those who lay beyond the geographical, political and spiritual boundaries of Christendom. Accordingly, they provide our principal sources for understanding how such groups were represented. In the first instance, this thesis is concerned with descriptions of groups physically located outside the Carolingian, Ottonian, and Salian Empires, particularly in the Scandinavian and Slavic worlds. But given the fluidity and interconnectedness of early medieval identities, it also encompasses representations of marginalised groups within Christendom such as slaves, women, heretics, Jews and political enemies.

Following a brief introduction, the thesis begins by setting out the theoretical foundations of an understanding of otherness based on the expectation of variety. This forms a response to the totalising claims of many recent discussions of otherness. This is followed by a close analysis of each text, beginning with the Hamburg-Bremen material, before moving on to Bruno of Querfurt’s works. The aim is to reflect the peculiar dynamics of each work and, consequently, discussions of these authors’ literary and exegetical concerns form a substantial part of this study. Their presentation of groups within Christendom has also been emphasised; sometimes the other was closer to home. The thesis concludes by emphasising the conceptual variety revealed in each work. Key themes can be identified, but the presentation of otherness in all of these texts is far more diverse and conceptually fragmented than is usually appreciated in existing scholarship.

This article is a first attempt at systematically considering the penance imposed by Bolesław the Brave on the assassins of the so-called Five Martyred Brethren, described in Vita Quinquae Fratrum Eremitarum by St. Bruno of Querfurt (BHL 1147). The killers of the hermits were condemned to life-long penance in an abbey founded by Duke Bolesław on the site of the desecrated hermitage soon after the crime (about 1003-1006). The posed research questions concern, predominantly, the reasons for this particular penance, its purpose and character, as well as sources and cultural context in the form of the tradition of monastic penance (Klosterbuße).
The conducted analysis leads to a conclusion claiming that putting murderers in monastery was the result of a carefully planned decision of the Polish ruler, taking into consideration a number of the factors, including legal requirements. Comparative survey made it possible to find many significant West European analogies to the penance imposed on murderers of Five Martyred Brethern both in normative sources (capitularies, penitentials, canon law colletions, synodal statutes) and those referring to the penitentiary practice of the early Middle Ages. Their confrontation with the account by Bruno of Querfurt demonstrates that the solution accepted by Bolesław the Brave took into consideration regulations known from penitential or canonical tradition condemning the killers of clergymen to life-long penance in a monastery known from the seventh century as servitium Dei. Following their contents, the duke resigned from his original intention to incarcerate the felons in ducal prison or to sentence them to death in favour of chastisement corresponding to standards that should be respected by a Christian ruler. The penalty did not deprive the perpetrators of the perspective of salvation.
The proposed analysis casts a new light not only on the issue of penitential practice during the Early Piast era but also on the wider problem of the application of regulations borrowed from Western culture in the domain ruled by Bolesław the Brave. The article expands heretofore knowledge about the part performed by Duke Bolesław in binding his state with the circle of post-Carolingian Latin civilisation through a conscious acculturation of Christian customs and norms.

In historiography, the most popular thesis regarding the missions of Adalbert and Bruno is the one saying that they both went to the pagans looking for martyrdom.
They considered it as the only true culmination of Christian life and the only way to salvation. In this article, this thesis was called into question and the problem was
analyzed from a messianic perspective. The first part is devoted to the discussion of the possible apocalyptic thinking of Emperor Otto III, who seems to be the key to
understanding the actions of Bruno, and through him perhaps also of Adalbert. The next part is an attempt to respond to the title issue based on the available source material that was analyzed in the light of the conclusions of part one and by using the comparative method. The final conclusions suggest reading the actions of Adalbert of Prague and Bruno of Querfurt from an apocalyptic and historiosophical perspective.

The chronology of life and works of St. Bruno of Querfurt has few certain points of refer- ence. One of the most certain is his expedition from Ruthenia to the Pechenegs’ country, dated by W. Meysztowicz to 22 February 1008 and accepted by later literature. The present paper both rejects the date proposed by Meysztowicz and suggested another date, 29 June 1008. Changing the date of his expedition to the Pechenegs by over four months has far-reaching implications for both the chronology of the last years of Bruno, and for dating his works. The remaining part of the paper is devoted to initial discussion of those implications.

Der Lebenslauf und das Werk des hl. Bruno-Bonifatius von Querfurt weisen nur wenige sichere Anhaltspunkte auf. Hierzu zählt auf jeden Fall seine Reise von Kiew ins Land der Petschenegen, deren Beginn von W. Meysztowicz auf den 22. Februar 1008 datiert wurde. Bisher wurde dieses Datum von der Forschung übernommen. Der vorliegende Beitrag lehnt den von Meysztowicz ermittelten Tag ab und schlägt stattdessen den 29. Juni 1008 vor. Die Verschiebung des Reiseantritts um über vier Monate hat weitreichende Folgen sowohl für die Chronologie seiner letzten Lebensjahre als auch für die Datierung seiner Werke. Die weiteren Ausführungen sind dementsprechend der Darstellung dieser Folgen gewidmet.

Nowe świadectwa rękopiśmienne "Żywota drugiego św. Wojciecha" w benedyktyńskim klasztorze w Rajhradzie na Morawach 1 W trakcie pracy nad edycją Vita altera s. Adalberti Jadwiga Karwasińska dysponowała mikrofilmami siedmiu rękopisów, w tym sześciu dla tzw. redakcji krótszej (red. brevior) tekstu 2. Relatywnie lepiej reprezentowana w tradycji rękopiśmiennej, krótsza redakcja podzielona została przez wydawczynię-zgodnie z pochodzeniem świadectw oraz brzmieniem odmianek-na wersję bawarską (2 rękopisy) oraz czeską (4 rękopisy) 3. Dwa spośród tych ostatnich przechowywane były w tym czasie w powołanej w 1958 r. Państwowej Bibliotece Naukowej (Státní vědecká knihovna) w Brnie, dziś noszącej nazwę Morawskiej Biblioteki Prowincjonalnej (Moravská zemská knihovna) 4. Jeden z rękopisów spożytkowanych przez Karwasińską pochodzi z klasztoru Augustianów w tym mieście (Karwasińska=Br), drugi zaś, przekaz fragmentaryczny, stanowił pierwej własność benedyktynów z pobliskiego Rajhradu (K=Rh). W trakcie kwerendy będącej częścią prac przygotowawczych do nowej edycji krytycznej dzieł wszystkich Brunona z Kwerfurtu udało mi się odnaleźć w drukowanym katalogu rękopisów rajhradzkich a następnie przebadać w drodze autopsji dwa dodatkowe nowe rękopisy, zawierające fragmentaryczne przekazy Vita altera. Jeden z nich to przekaz redakcji krótszej (sygn. R 394), drugi zaś dłuższej (R 30). Poniższy artykuł przybliża obydwa znaleziska oraz stara się wskazać ich miejsce w tradycji rękopiśmiennej tekstu.

Saints of the Christianization Age of Central Europe (Tenth-Eleventh Centuries), ed. Gábor Klaniczay, transl. Cristian Gaşpar, Marina Miladinov, Budapest–New York 2013, is already the sixth volume of the Central European Medieval Texts series, published by Central European University. In the same manner as previous volumes it contains bilingual (Latin-English) editions of texts, which in this volume are hagiographical. The objects are saints of the age of Christianization in the present-day regions of Dalmatia, Bohemia, Poland, and Hungary, and the subject are post-Carolingian hagiographers, either outsiders or homines novi in Central Europe. The review is particularly interested in editions of two texts, namely, the anonymous Vita prior s. Adalberti (BHL 37) and the so-called Vita quinque fratrum (BHL 1147), composed by Bruno-Boniface of Querfurt.
Every new edition has a potential for redefining a text, which subsequently a relatively wide group of readers will recognise as a canonical version. Consequently, every new proposal should be examined with due attention and a dose of criticism. In the case of Vita prior s. Adalberti the editors suggest a number of independent solutions of problems connected to the manuscript tradition, the chronological order of the redactions, the hagiographer’s erudition, the place of origin of the oldest version, and the authorship. The number of strictly ecdotic new proposals for Vita quinque fratrum is smaller, and the remarks pertain mainly to the author’s cultural “equipment” (citations, allusions, etc.) indicated in the edition. The review discusses in greater detail the majority of editorial recommendations and attempts to place them within the context of an extensive and long-lasting debate involving problems of both textual criticism and hagiographers’ worldview.

Codex theol. lat. oct. 162 (Staatsbibliothek Berlin) plays an important role in Polish medieval studies due to its containing the sole witness of Vita Quinque Fratrum (BHL 1147) by Bruno of Querfurt. The article traces history of the codex from the origin until its discovery in the family library of Reinhard Kade, the first editor of VQF. The oldest part of the codex is a passionale (12/13th cent.), which was written at (or at least very early belonged to) the Benedictine monastery in Huysburg. In the 15th century — still in Huysburg — it was bound together with two later unrelated manuscripts to form the current composite codex. During the secularization of the monastery at the beginning of the 19th century it came into possession of Friedrich Gottlieb Julius von Bülow (1760–1831), an assessor and book collector. After von Bülow’s death his collection was put up at auction, the printed catalogue of which lists our manuscript. The codex was bought by Kade’s paternal grandfather, Anton Krüger of Dresden a noted engraver. The rest of manuscript’s history is well known.
The second part of the article examines a couple of hypothetical routes, through which the source copy for our witness (i.e. a very early copy or even Bruno’s draft) or the witness itself could have been transferred to Huysburg, by tracing both direct and indirect connections of Querfurt counts and the monastery. Those hypothetical routes from Querfurt (Eilversdorf monastery?) to Huysburg — both in the diocese of Halberstadt — also try to make sense of the apparent interest that the passionale compiler had taken in Magdeburg.
A brief addendum discusses the implications of the re-discovery of a codex from Ebrach, previously considered lost, that was suspected by G. Waitz to be identical with our witness or, by W. Kętrzyński and W. Meysztowicz, to be a source for Cosmas’ of Prague version of Five Brothers text.
Late in the publishing process the author became aware the new description of theol. lat. oct. 162 (Beate Braun-Niehr, Manuscripta Mediaevalia database: <http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/dokumente/html/obj31101702> [access: 29.09.2016]. This new description independently and concisely provides some of the article’s findings (ownership note from Huysburg, auction catalogue of „Bibliotheca Büloviana”, lost codex of Ebrach- Nepomuk). Still available is the previous catalogue description, which was known to the author in February 2014, during the autopsy of Huysburg codices in Berlin <http://www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de/dokumente/html/obj90432270,T> [access: 29.09.2016].