Last Things Read online

  When this happened, all that was not human grew pale. The mundus, the physical universe, that “great city of gods and men,” lost something of its glory and of its reassuring immensity. In a vision told to Boniface in the late 730s in Frisia, a view from beyond the grave no longer included the mundus in its glory, as it had appeared to pagan mystics of an earlier age as they ascended through its refulgent layers to the Milky Way and to the world beyond the stars.84 What now mattered for the visionary was a view of the sum total of human secrets. The basic model for such revelations was no longer a longing to embrace the universe from a high point in the stars. It was a longing to unveil the “hidden things” of the religious life, secret sins, secret virtues, secret practices told in the confessional or whispered into the ears of holy hermits—in sum, to penetrate the secrets of the individual. What the monk reported by Boniface saw was not the mundus: it was “the individual merits of almost all persons and the human race and all the world gathered before his gaze as so many individual souls.”85

  And with that change—a change inevitably made to seem more abrupt, more irreversible and unidirectional in the short space of one essay than it was in reality, but a change all the same—we have reached the end of a very ancient world. It is an ancient world whose unmistakable profile we who study late antiquity have learned to recognize. But the distinctiveness of that profile stands out also in contrast to other forms of Christianity in terms of those imaginative structures that were central to its own life but which it did not pass on to later ages. After the seventh century, a new style of Western Christianity emerged. It was greatly preoccupied with issues of merit, sin, and identity and so found itself in need of a different imaginative world peopled with more clearly focused faces not only of the saints but even of sinners—the non valde mali of whom Augustine had written in his Enchiridion. The new Christianity of early medieval Western Europe did not wish to appropriate the rich imaginative structures of its own, more ancient past. An ancient sense of untrammeled power and mercy associated with the empire of God was lost along the way.86 As a result, late antique Christian views of the other world have remained either opaque to us or can seem strangely out of focus. The ancient other world, in its Christian form, is one of those many casualties of time that we tend to sum up in the somewhat anodyne phrase, “The Birth of Medieval Europe.”

  From Jericho to Jerusalem

  The Violent Transformation of Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne

  Jacqueline E. Jung

  On the Evening of Friday, November 7,1225, the archbishop of Cologne was murdered. That surprise attack by a band of local noblemen left the city bereft of a charismatic, powerful, and decidedly controversial political and ecclesiastical leader. One year later the Cistercian monk Caesarius of Heisterbach, at the urging of the new archbishop Henry of Molenark, attempted to remedy the loss by composing a Vita of Engelbert, praising his deeds and ultimately proclaiming him a saint.1 The text is an extraordinary document that contains lively narrative sequences, detailed accounts of political situations, and some remarkable theoretical wrestling with the notion of sanctity. For, as Caesarius was well aware, claims for the archbishop’s holiness were not to go undisputed; many citizens appear simply not to have liked him much, and most were aware that his spiritual concerns were not abundant. Below the surface of Caesarius’s candid biography lies a mass of questions that we can see him struggling to resolve, both for the sake of a consistent narrative and in order to persuade his skeptical audience. What is the nature of sanctity? How do miracles work? How do they relate to virtues in life? What is the relation between life and death and the afterlife? At the heart of these diverse questions lie distinct but often contradictory assumptions and expectations about Last Things. Caesarius knew he was treading on thin ice by proclaiming Engelbert a martyr who enjoyed company with God immediately following his unexpected violent death, for, as he and his readers were certainly well aware, an extended sojourn in purgatory would have been necessary for anyone else departing life with the spiritual failings of this archbishop. How were these conflicting assumptions about the “eschatology of immortality” to be reconciled?

  As we shall see, Caesarius would return repeatedly to the fact of Engelbert’s murder and to its gruesome relic, the corpse, in order to work out these issues. The shock and pain of death in this case provided the pivotal point. As the archbishop’s blood flowed out, what had been spiritual deficiencies in life became wells of virtue, worldly activities were replaced by miraculous ones, and the man who in the end could not save himself in the flesh gained the power to save the souls of others. While my account of Caesarius’s biography of Engelbert is a case study of one man’s Last Things, it contains much that is relevant to a more general discussion of eschatology. Issues of life and death, body and soul, judgment and salvation form the crux of the narrative, and Caesarius’s unconventional treatment of the eschatology of immortality makes the Vita an especially valuable document when we consider thirteenth-century views of the End.2

  Our view of this text must be deepened and complicated on the other hand if we keep in mind that it was ultimately unsuccessful in its aims to provide Cologne with a new saint: Engelbert was never canonized (nor, it appears, was a formal canonization process even initiated), and the spate of miracles so dutifully recorded in the Vita seems to have died along with Caesarius in around 1240. The Vita did not attract interest until the sixteenth century, when it was reworked in 1575 by Laurentius Surius.3 Eight years later Engelbert’s name was entered for the first time into the Roman Martyrology, although his feast day was not celebrated publicly until 1617. Renewed interest in the archbishop’s relics followed immediately; they were translated in 1622 and in 1633 received a glorious new shrine reliquary.4 Tourists visiting the Cologne Cathedral Treasury today can marvel at the lavishness of the precious materials and the dramatic poses of the little bishop figurines that line the sides of the coffer, gazing attentively at the scenes from the life of Engelbert depicted on silver relief plaques just above their shoulders: Engelbert saying mass, Engelbert feeding the hungry, Engelbert stabbed amid a flurry of cloaks and horses’ hooves. To be sure, there is a far greater emphasis on the archbishop’s pastoral care and personal piety in these images then there is in Caesarius’s Vita—a reflection of the very different concerns of the Church during the Counter-Reformation that were also manifested in the title of Engelbert’s new Vita with its emphasis on his “defensione ecclesiasticae libertatis et Romanae Ecclesiae obedientia.” The shrine, of course, is likewise couched in a drastically different visual idiom from that current at the time of his death—one need only compare the sprawling baroque effigy with the solemn wooden statue of Engelbert produced around 1240 (now in Münster).5 Nonetheless, in the narrative panels that frame the archbishop’s bones, the words of Caesarius continue to resonate.

  During his nine-year reign, Caesarius tells us, Archbishop Engelbert II of Berg proved himself a fierce and enthusiastic civic protector.6 His position established him as the most powerful official in the Holy Roman Empire after the emperor himself, and when after a tumultuous adolescence he grasped the reins of office, it was with evident glee. A member of one of Cologne’s oldest and most formidable families,7 he aimed to reestablish Cologne’s preeminence after decades of political and economic turmoil, and he swiftly put to an end the war, famine, inflation, and interdicts that had characterized his predecessors’ reigns.8 He rebuilt crumbling defensive walls, resuscitated long-dead trade routes, and proudly assumed the role of a “new Solomon” as he stunned visiting kings and dignitaries with the splendor of his markedly improved city.9 Along with his duties as chief imperial administrator and local prince, Archbishop Engelbert worked to renovate churches, welcomed members of the young mendicant orders (who were still treated with suspicion), and reestablished the by then hazy boundaries between secular and ecclesiastical privileges, successfully reclaiming for the church numerous properties long oppressed by local nobles.10 At the same tim
e, we are told, he exercised an ardent love for peace and zeal for justice, hearing and helping the local downtrodden in their plights against greedy lawyers, highwaymen, and even the ecclesiastical bureaucracy of which he himself was a part.11 In this, Engelbert follows the model of lay male piety established in Odo of Cluny’s tenth-century Life of Saint Gerald of Aurillac, but in contrast to Gerald, as we shall see, Engelbert displays no religious motivations or corresponding ascetic behavior.12

  Like those of other charismatic power-holders (then as now), Engelbert’s bold actions and forceful character caused sharp divisions in public opinion about him. Nevertheless, whether one loved and admired or feared and resented him, his far-reaching influence, diplomatic savvy, and administrative ingenuity were widely recognized and often appreciated by contemporaries. Nor did his lack of concern for pastoral duties or spiritual care seem to bother his contemporaries, who must have taken for granted the essentially secular, political nature of a powerful bishop-prince’s duties. Although personal piety and an ascetic life did matter in questions of episcopal sanctity, as contemporary canonization documents make clear,13 it is, as C. Stephen Jaeger has reminded us, abundantly evident from surviving bishops’ biographies that “piety was not a requisite quality for the position [of bishop] in the same way that statesmanship and administrative skill were.”14 One can hardly obtain a clearer picture of the duties and qualities associated with the powerful bishop-princes of thirteenth-century Germany than from the verses written by the proimperial poet-propagandist Walther von der Vogelweide, praising Engelbert’s achievements in the early 1220s:

  Von Kölne werder bischof, sint von schulden frô.

  ir hânt dem rîche wol gedienet und alsô,

  daz iuwer lob da enzwischen stîget unde sweibet hô.

  sî iuwer werdekeit dekeinen boesen zagen swære,

  fürsten meister, dáz sî íu als ein unnütze drô.

  getriuwer küniges pflégære, ír sît hôher mære,

  keisers êren trôst baz dánne ie kanzelære,

  drîer künige und éinlif tûsent megde kamerære.15

  Noble bishop of Cologne, you have good cause to be happy. You have served the empire well—so well that your fame has grown in the meantime, and now hovers high. Should your esteem be offensive to any common cowards, you chief of princes, may that be to you an empty threat. Loyal guardian of the king, you are widely famous — better than any chancellor the guarantor of the emperor’s honor, protector of Three Kings and Eleven Thousand Virgins.

  Perhaps, joining in Walther’s optimism, Engelbert took those words too much to heart and dismissed completely the threats that “common cowards” were indeed to pose. In any case, what began as a straightforward but irreconcilable dispute between the archbishop and his distant cousin Count Frederick of Isenberg over rights to a local nunnery ended in Engelbert’s bloody death in 1225.16 Modern scholarship, beginning with a 1917 article by Wolfgang Kleist, maintains that the original plan had been simply to kidnap not kill the archbishop.17 Frederick, who under the mask of friendship was accompanying Engelbert on a journey to a church dedication ceremony in the outer reaches of the diocese, had treacherously arranged for some twenty-five of his men to wait in ambush along the sides of what Caesarius describes as a “concave road,” a narrow path embedded between steep wooded hills near to the town of Gevelsberg. When the men, well concealed by the trees, leaped down to seize the vulnerable archbishop, the violence was evidently meant to stop there. But the plan backfired. For the archbishop, suddenly “made stronger,” surprised the hitmen by struggling vigorously against them, and the attackers lost all control and drew their daggers. What followed, according to an eyewitness report, was a frenzied free-for-all, with the men brutally pounding, stabbing, and chopping away at the indignant, terrified, and ultimately helpless archbishop.18 When Engelbert’s companions, worried that he had been taken captive by his enemies, turned back to search for him, they nearly stumbled over his prone body lying in the dirt. One can only imagine their shock to find their proud and robust leader now a filthy, bloody corpse—“exceedingly horrible to see” and, to add insult to injury, even stripped of his characteristically sumptuous attire.

  The scenes described here were to provide fodder for much imaginative speculation in later centuries—from the dramatic depiction on the side of Engelbert’s baroque shrine, which represents the men in great swooping cloaks and mannered poses, to Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s Romantic ballad “Der Tod des Erzbischofs Engelbert von Köln” (1838), which calls to mind a dreamy, gentle Engelbert facing the band of villains amid a forest thick with crackling branches and dripping dew.19 In contrast to those later, embellished versions of the story, Caesarius’s account remains remarkably pragmatic. Just as in the miracle stories, he is careful to inform us which person performed what act at which point; and while the scene is a highly engaging read by virtue of its subject matter, Caesarius’s primary concern seems to be to provide a full and accurate report of the struggle. Perhaps, paradoxically, it is the very matter-of-factness of this account, which does not appear to embellish anything and saves any moralizing until the end, that makes it so moving. Certainly it conforms to a tradition of history writing analyzed by Karl Morrison and exemplified by Caesarius’s compatriot Otto of Freising, who “considered part of the historian’s task to provide the reader with the illusion of being an eyewitness.”20

  But back to the narrative itself. Stunned, saddened, and most likely terrified for their own safety, the archbishop’s companions next piled his corpse onto an offensive-smelling dung cart borrowed from a nearby farmer and trundled it along to the closest church. Engelbert’s humiliation was deepened further when, upon arrival there, the pastor made clear his disgust for the gory heap. Claiming that the body would “contaminate” the church, he relegated it instead to a corner of his living quarters for the night, where it would do less harm. There a monk recently converted from the knightly class guarded it—his former profession, it was claimed, made him less likely to be disturbed by close contact with a murdered person. The body soon began to work miracles, healing those who dared touch it and provoking visions in those who sat mourning it.21 These powers might help explain the fascination with which, soon afterward, the corpse was washed, eviscerated, inspected, and commented upon before being hauled back to Cologne, where the flesh was finally boiled away and buried in an “old tower.”22 The bones—clean, now, though thoroughly crushed in the onslaught—remained exposed as powerful and less revolting tokens of the offense. These and the blood-soaked cap and shirt were marched from town to town by Cologne officials to reinforce their complaints against the crime’s perpetrators, and these articles acted as tangible stand-ins for the archbishop in passionate demands for justice and revenge. Within a year, the main instigators—most prominently, Count Frederick of Isenberg—were tracked down, tried, and publicly executed.23 And it was one year after the murder, in November 1226, that the middle-aged Prior Caesarius from the monastery at Heisterbach presented to the new archbishop Henry of Molenark a Vita of Engelbert declaring him a saint.

  Although the Vita was written at Henry’s request—as the prefatory, conventional claims of modesty and unworthiness insist—there is good reason to believe that Caesarius was already deeply engaged in the tumultuous events surrounding the hero’s life and death.24 He included a passionate lament about the murder in a sermon composed immediately after the killing and probably, given the ambivalent attitude displayed toward the archbishop’s life, even before the miracles began to occur. And in the prologue to a new collection of miracle stories known as the Libri miraculorum (1225–26), Caesarius announced his intention to include a Vita of Engelbert as Books IV and V That plan was ultimately not borne out, probably because the subsequent official commission would have rendered it superfluous.25

  Modern scholars, of course, are well familiar with Caesarius of Heisterbach as an enthusiastic observer, reporter, and interpreter of things miraculous, and his peers in th
irteenth-century monastic communities also recognized him as such.26 His Dialogue on Miracles was a best-seller, so to speak, even as he was writing it—much to his own annoyance, for in a letter to a Prior Peter of Marienstatt he complains of certain monks and nuns snatching up portions to copy before his careful revisions were complete.27 Although representing a different genre, the Vita of Engelbert is no less characterized by vivid local color, narrative candor, and wide-eyed wit than those collections of exempla—the lively account of the archbishop’s murder, supplemented by an eyewitness report, has been praised by modern commentators as “among the best [passages] that Caesarius ever wrote.”28

  As a historical document, however, the Vita remains as problematic and controversial as its very subject had been. By defying attempts to categorize it definitively as “true” historical biography or as a bit of myth-making hagiography, its structure has long frustrated modern scholars.29 Its content presented no less a problem to Caesarius’s own contemporaries (as he himself notes), many of whom were indeed skeptical that the worldly, wealthy man they knew could possibly be the healing, punishing, and vision-stimulating holy man whose pious activities were being recounted.30 This, of course, is a dilemma that must have vexed many hagiographers of recognizable, recently dead persons: namely, how to reconcile a physical, time-bound life in the world with a spiritual, ahistorical holy existence. Saintly bishops—whose nonsaintly peers were frequently commemorated in laudatory episcopal biographies31—provided special problems for their biographers, who had to combine the traditions of hagiographical and biographical writing to produce a new picture of a man who was both a secular administrative whiz and a pious ascetic. In fact, in spite of the low expectations for piety in bishops as essentially political figures, all five bishops who both died and were canonized during the thirteenth century—William of Bourges (d. 1209, can. 1218), Hugh of Lincoln (d. 1200, can. 1220), Edmund of Canterbury (d. 1240, can. 1247), William Pinchon (d. 1234, can. 1247), and Richard of Chichester (d. 1253, can. 1262)32—displayed a penchant for ascetic, distinctly mendicant-influenced ideals, acting as models of humility, poverty, generosity, and so on. As in the case of Gerald of Aurillac, such behavior was closely tied to active thaumaturgical powers, so that their sanctity was recognized and praised during their lifetimes.33