CONGRESS CANCELED Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel and the Carolingian Reform Project
Description
Smaragdus, abbot of St. Mihiel in northern France, was active at the court of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, engaged in Latin pedagogy, theological discussions, monastic reforms, and diplomatic missions. He also was a very prolific and widely read Carolingian author. His Diadema monachorum and Via regia were popular and much copied texts throughout the Middle Ages. In spite of all this, our knowledge about his person is scant and has not significantly increased since the study of Fidel Rädle (1974). Recent studies (Ponesse 2010, Kramer 2014) on the Carolingian monastic reform project, however, do shed more light on Smaragdus’ functioning within the context of the Carolingian monastic, textual, and pedagogical reforms. This session will explore Smaragdus and his times through the means that are at our disposal: his very own texts. By contextualizing the aforementioned works, along with the Liber in partibus Donati, Expositio in regulam S. Benedicti, and the Expositio libri comitis, the sources, the methods, and impact of Smaragdus will render a more complete picture of this important intellectual. Matthieu Herman van der Meer
CONGRESS CANCELED Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel and the Carolingian Reform Project
Schneider 1325
Smaragdus, abbot of St. Mihiel in northern France, was active at the court of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, engaged in Latin pedagogy, theological discussions, monastic reforms, and diplomatic missions. He also was a very prolific and widely read Carolingian author. His Diadema monachorum and Via regia were popular and much copied texts throughout the Middle Ages. In spite of all this, our knowledge about his person is scant and has not significantly increased since the study of Fidel Rädle (1974). Recent studies (Ponesse 2010, Kramer 2014) on the Carolingian monastic reform project, however, do shed more light on Smaragdus’ functioning within the context of the Carolingian monastic, textual, and pedagogical reforms. This session will explore Smaragdus and his times through the means that are at our disposal: his very own texts. By contextualizing the aforementioned works, along with the Liber in partibus Donati, Expositio in regulam S. Benedicti, and the Expositio libri comitis, the sources, the methods, and impact of Smaragdus will render a more complete picture of this important intellectual. Matthieu Herman van der Meer