Old voices saying new things: Re-writing classical literature at the monastery of Fulda in the mid-ninth century

Presented by Matthew Edholm, Visiting Fellow at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

Abstract: This paper examines the way in which two authors of the mid-ninth century, Rudolf of Fulda and Brun Candidus, used classical Roman sources silently within their own work. Rudolf silently quotes from Tacitus’s Germania and elsewhere from Vitruvius’s De architectura; while Brun often adopts phrases and half-lines culled primarily from the poetry of Virgil and Ovid and stitches them into his own lines in his Metrical Life of Eigil (Vita Aeigilis). I will argue that both Rudolf and Brun receive and re-shape past Roman writers in order to make them re-signify and speak toward Christian purposes relevant to the monastery of Fulda. Furthermore, the paper will situate this practice of re-writing past authors within the context of Late Antique art and poetic aesthetics in order to demonstrate the origin of the style, as well as that style’s application to Carolingian reliquaries and material artefacts. In this way it will map out a Carolingian aesthetic of refashioning the past to serve the needs of the (medieval) present.

Bio: After serving three years in the army, I completed a Bachelor’s degree in Humanities from Lee University. After this I received an MLitt with Merit in Medieval Studies from the University of St Andrews. Next I studied English Language and Literature at Villanova University before returning to St Andrews to begin a PhD in Medieval History. My research has focused on the Carolingian reception of classical literature, the transmission of Roman texts, and the library at the monastery of Fulda, in Germany. My first publication came out in 2023 and was entitled “Re-examining Hrabanus Maurus’ letter on incest and magic” in the journal Early Medieval Europe.