Peter Christian Jacobsen, ed. and trans.,. (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 81.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2016. Pp. ix, 629. €80. ISBN: 978-3-447-10559-0.
The vita of Abbot John of Gorze (BHL 4396) is much more than a conventional saint's life; it is a richly detailed account of the origins of the tenth-century monastic movement known as the Gorze or Lotharingian reform. Modern scholars have convincingly identified the author as a Gorze alumnus, also named John, who became abbot of St. Arnulf, Metz. He knew his subject intimately and brings to life a huge cast of admirable characters around him, such as Einold, first abbot of Gorze after its refoundation in 933; charismatic mentors such as the hermit Humbertus and young nun Geisa; and model peers such as the monks Bernacer and Ansteus. John of St. Arnulf was unusually good at portraying flawed but sympathetic personalities, like the gyrovague Landbertus or the contumacious monk Angilramnus; even the community's chief local supporter, Bishop Adalbero of Metz (939–62), comes in for a share of blame. John himself, sometimes lost in this crowd, gradually emerges as a complex figure: of humble origins, he distinguished himself by piety, intellect, and self-denial, and most of all, it seems, by a genius for managing practical affairs, first as a layman in the world, then as a monk for his community. The managerial virtues of shrewdness and integrity also served him well as an ambassador (953–56) from Otto I to the Umayyad Caliph of Córdba, Abd Al-Rahman III.
The fascination of so much in this work makes its abrupt ending—right in the middle of John's long-awaited dialogue with the wary caliph—all the more disappointing. Either the author never finished the vita or a very substantial portion of it has been lost. (According to the preface, the plan was to include full accounts of John's abbacy, from c. 960, and of his death.) The text survives in only one copy, made in the late tenth or early eleventh century, now Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS lat. 13766, fols. 49v–96v. The leaves containing the vita of John have suffered damage from moisture and severe trimming. As a result, many short passages of text have been lost or rendered illegible, especially over the last ten folios or so. These challenges, compounded by John of St. Arnulf's often opaque Latin, have already merited the attentions of some gifted editors, among them Sirmond in 1658 (Acta Sanctorum, Febr. III), Mabillon (1685), and Pertz in 1841 (MGH Scriptores IV). In an affordable edition of 1999, Michel Parisse published an improved Latin text, based on Pertz's, accompanied by a helpful French translation (the first complete one into any modern language).
As a reader approaches Peter Christian Jacobsen's freshly constituted Latin text of the vita and facing-page German translation, the main question is whether it represents a substantial advance beyond Pertz and Parisse. Undoubtedly the answer is yes, for several reasons. With Professor Jacobsen's command of classical and medieval Latin philology, and with the ample room that an MGH volume allows for apparatus and commentary, this new edition leaves almost no important linguistic, paleographical, or historical problem of the vita unaddressed. (That said, the otherwise full introduction devotes surprisingly little space, only three pages [102–05], to synthesizing remarks on John's style; Jacobsen's valuable insights into his Latinity have to be sifted from the commentary, with help from the volume's very generous index verborum.) Where the difficult text admits more than one plausible interpretation, Jacobsen is usually transparent about his reasons for choosing a particular course. One notable departure of Jacobsen's text from those of Pertz and Parisse is its treatment of the numerous damaged passages. Pertz tended to remedy these with brilliant conjectures that he (and Parisse following him) incorporated directly into the Latin text. Jacobsen, noting that some modern scholars have taken these reconstructions as authentic, has relegated them to his critical apparatus; he also painstakingly critiques all past conjectures, noting wherever one seems a bad fit for the length of lacuna or is contradicted by other evidence. In the text itself, Jacobsen simply prints ellipses at these moments. The resulting arrangement is more disruptive for the reader but arguably a more forthright representation of the evidence. It is also a good illustration of how Jacobsen's instincts as an editor reflect his long immersion in the problems of this text. Given the multiple kinds of challenge posed by John's vita, it is hard to imagine that anyone else could bring to the task so strong a combination of linguistic and historical good judgment. One can only hope that somebody will soon produce an English translation of the vita that fully exploits Jacobsen's excellent scholarship on this interesting and important text.
By Christopher A. Jones
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