Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989-1034

by Richard Landes

Overview

This unusual biographical work traces the life and career of Ademar of Chabannes, a monk, historian, liturgist, and hagiographer who lived at the turn of the first Christian millennium. Thanks to the unique collection of over one thousand folios of autograph manuscript that Ademar left behind, Richard Landes has been able to reconstruct in great detail the development of Ademar's career and the events of his day, and to suggest several major revisions in the general picture held by current medieval historiography.

Above all, the author's research confirms and elaborates the realization (first articulated over sixty years ago by the historian Louis Saltet) that in 1029 Ademar suffered a humiliating defeat at the height of his career and spent his final five years feverishly producing a dossier of forgeries and fictions about his own contemporaries that has few parallels in the annals on medieval forgery. Not only did that dossier of forgeries succeed in misleading historians from the twelfth century right up to the twentieth, but few historians have been willing to explore the implications of so striking a revision in Ademar's biography. Richard Landes is the first to systematically examine the evidence and the implications for our understanding of the period, and he offers an explanation of how these remarkable developments might have occurred.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674755307
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	05/17/1998
Series:	Harvard Historical Studies , #117
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Richard A. Landes is Senior Fellow at the Center for International Communication, Bar-Ilan University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

I. Ademar and Aquitaine at the Turn of the Millennium

1. An Embarrassment of Riches: Ademar's Autograph Corpus

2. The Social and Political Climate of Aquitaine at the Turn of the Millennium

3. The Politics of Popular Enthusiasm and the Origins of the Vita Prolixior

II. Early Career: The Formation of a Monastic Historian, 989-1028

4. Ademar's Youth: Monastic Withdrawal from a Turbulent World

5. A Monk in Church Politics: From Copyist to Historian

6. Writing History in an Apocalyptic Age: Alpha

7. Jerusalem Pilgrimage, Abbacy Lost, History Gained: Beta

8. Assassination, Witchcraft, and the Crucible of Ambition

III. The Apostolic Controversy: From Apostolic Impresario to Master Forger, 1028-1031

9. The Consecration of the Basilica Regalis and Ademar's Conversion to the Cult of Saint Martial

10. The Year of the Apostolic Liturgy: Gamma

11. Impresario on the Ropes: The Debates with Benedict of Chiusa

12. Dilemmas of a Masterful Failure: The Circular Apology

13. Birth of a Solitary Forger: Confection of the Apostolic Corpus

IV. The Millennial Generation

14. The Terrible Hopes of the Millennial Generation and the Weeping Crucifix

15. Ademar and the Millennial Generation: Apostolic Relics and Apocalyptic Pilgrimages

16. Epilogue: On Timing, Editing, and Forgery

Appendices

A. Chronology, 987-1034

B. Manuscripts in Ademar's Corpus

C. Identifying Ademar's Handwriting

D. Manuscript Descriptions

D1. BN lat. 5239

D2. BN lat. 3784: A Monastic Compendium

D3. Leiden, Vossianus Oct. 15: A Liberal Arts Florilegium

D4. BN lat. 2400: An Ecclesiastical Miscellany

D5. BN lat. 6190, folios S3-57: First Draft of the History

D6. BN lat. 5943A: Historical Works

E. Apocalyptic Signs and Ademar's Description of I009-1010

F. Ademar's Trips to Limoges, 1024-1034

G. Length of Simneon's Stay in Angoulême

H. Poisonings in Beta

I. Analysis of the Sources on Witchcraft

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Landes convinced me without any qualms of the importance of his approach. He is absolutely right to stress the importance of Ademar's corpus, substantial portions of it autograph. It is not just that Ademar is an important source for our writing and history. As Landes says, the fact that Ademar wrote and revised so much allows us to see into the creative process of a single man who lived at a watershed. We can see into his mind. And because Ademar was tortured and flawed, we have, as Landes also points out in a wonderful phrase, 'the autograph record of a man going mad.' Uncommon enough for any period, this is a motherlode for the middle ages.

Bernard S. Bachrach

A brilliant work which synthesizes the immense technical skills Landes has acquired with his talent as an historian. Because Ademar left so many manuscripts in so many fields of endeavor and because he was so thoroughly a part of the major historical movements in Aquitaine during the first third of the eleventh century, Landes is able to break new ground in a methodological sense with regard to the writing of various aspects of the social and religious history of the French kingdom in pre-Crusade Europe. Particular emphasis here is given to popular religion, the peace movement, apocalyptic thought and social patterns. Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History, moreover, is at once an intellectual biography, a personal biography, and a social history. Thus, Ademar the man, Ademar the monk, Ademar the scholar, Ademar the Christian, and Ademar the public figure are all thoroughly integrated in Landes' remarkable study.
— Bernard S. Bachrach, University of Minnesota

Geoffrey Koziol

Landes convinced me without any qualms of the importance of his approach. He is absolutely right to stress the importance of Ademar's corpus, substantial portions of it autograph. It is not just that Ademar is an important source for our writing and history. As Landes says, the fact that Ademar wrote and revised so much allows us to see into the creative process of a single man who lived at a watershed. We can see into his mind. And because Ademar was tortured and flawed, we have, as Landes also points out in a wonderful phrase, 'the autograph record of a man going mad.' Uncommon enough for any period, this is a motherlode for the middle ages.
— Geoffrey Koziol, University of California at Berkeley

Editorial Reviews

A brilliant work which synthesizes the immense technical skills Landes has acquired with his talent as an historian. Because Ademar left so many manuscripts in so many fields of endeavor and because he was so thoroughly a part of the major historical movements in Aquitaine during the first third of the eleventh century, Landes is able to break new ground in a methodological sense with regard to the writing of various aspects of the social and religious history of the French kingdom in pre-Crusade Europe. Particular emphasis here is given to popular religion, the peace movement, apocalyptic thought and social patterns. Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History, moreover, is at once an intellectual biography, a personal biography, and a social history. Thus, Ademar the man, Ademar the monk, Ademar the scholar, Ademar the Christian, and Ademar the public figure are all thoroughly integrated in Landes' remarkable study.

Bernard S. Bachrach

Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History is an intelligent and imaginative study of an author who accounts for a large proportion of the surviving narrative sources for Aquitaine in the first third of the eleventh century and is consequently central to our understanding of important movements such as the Peace of God, pilgrimage, and the cult of saints. Ademar left a substantial corpus, much of it autograph. This provides the cornerstone of Landes's challenging methodology whereby he calibrates shifts in Ademar's literary identity—as copyist, historian, liturgist, and mythographer—against a detailed biographical reconstruction which is in turn interwoven with the religious, social, and political currents affecting the 'millennial generation'. Landes excels in applying skilled palaeographical, codicological, and textual analysis to wider issues...This is an ambitious, original, methodologically exciting, and closely argued work of great interest.

English Historical Review [UK] - Marcus Bull

Landes convinced me without any qualms of the importance of his approach. He is absolutely right to stress the importance of Ademar's corpus, substantial portions of it autograph. It is not just that Ademar is an important source for our writing and history. As Landes says, the fact that Ademar wrote and revised so much allows us to see into the creative process of a single man who lived at a watershed. We can see into his mind. And because Ademar was tortured and flawed, we have, as Landes also points out in a wonderful phrase, 'the autograph record of a man going mad.' Uncommon enough for any period, this is a motherlode for the middle ages.

Geoffrey Koziol

On August 3, 1029, Ademar of Chabannes suffered a humiliating defeat when his plans for a triumphal procession of the relics of St. Martial and the chanting of his new liturgy in Martial's honor turned into a fiasco. He spent the next five years writing forgeries and fictions about his contemporaries which have misled historians up to the 20th century. He left behind more than 1,000 folios of manuscripts. This account by Professor Landes of Boston University sheds new light on the cult of saints, apocalypticism, scriptoria and their manuscripts, and historiography.

Theology Digest

Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History is an intelligent and imaginative study of an author who accounts for a large proportion of the surviving narrative sources for Aquitaine in the first third of the eleventh century and is consequently central to our understanding of important movements such as the Peace of God, pilgrimage, and the cult of saints. Ademar left a substantial corpus, much of it autograph. This provides the cornerstone of Landes's challenging methodology whereby he calibrates shifts in Ademar's literary identity—as copyist, historian, liturgist, and mythographer—against a detailed biographical reconstruction which is in turn interwoven with the religious, social, and political currents affecting the 'millennial generation'. Landes excels in applying skilled palaeographical, codicological, and textual analysis to wider issues...This is an ambitious, original, methodologically exciting, and closely argued work of great interest.
— Marcus Bull

English Historical Review [UK]

Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History is an intelligent and imaginative study of an author who accounts for a large proportion of the surviving narrative sources for Aquitaine in the first third of the eleventh century and is consequently central to our understanding of important movements such as the Peace of God, pilgrimage, and the cult of saints…This is an ambitious, original, methodologically exciting, and closely argued work of great interest.
— Marcus Bull

English Historical Review