The Frankish or the Roman Connection? Old Ideas, Modern Misconceptions, and New Evidence Concerning the Author of the First Vita of St. Adalbert of Prague

The present lecture explores the complex and skillful way in which Iohannes Canaparius (d. 1004), abbot of the Benedictine monastery of SS. Alexius and Boniface in Rome, employed quotations from various classical and late antique authors in his Vita of St. Adalbert of Prague (ca. 956-997). This hagiographic text, not extant in its original form, but whose tenor can be reconstructed on the basis of three surviving versions that reworked it soon after its composition, was written ca. 999, most probably in Rome, presumably as part of a “canonization campaign” instigated by Emperor Otto III.

In doing so, I rely on the results of my recent research, which has unearthed a large number of such (hitherto unidentified) quotations from classical and patristic sources, woven by Canaparius into the texture of his hagiographic account. I will argue that Canaparius' strategy of accumulating classical and late antique textual spolia at key points in his narrative should be regarded as more than just another example of “Ottonian Schmuckstil” (W. Berschin). Such quotations served Canaparius as a means to delineate and legitimize a certain model of sanctity—the perfect bishop and the accomplished monk—, which he could combine into an effective portrait of his subject, St. Adalbert. At the same time, I will also address the possible function of these textual spolia as an indicator of the cultural background of the author of this hagiographic text and the implications of their use for the debate on the authorship of the Vita S. Adalberti, whose traditional attribution to Iohannes Canaparius has been recently—and, in my view, unnecessarily—questioned by several German scholars.

Cristian Gaşpar graduated from Classical Philology at the Universitatea de Vest, Timişoara, Romania (1997). MA (1998) and PhD (2006) in Medieval Studies at the Central European University, Budapest with a dissertation on the Philotheos historia of Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Lector of Ancient Languages at the Department of Medieval Studies and the Source Language Teaching Group (CEU). Author of various studies and articles on topics such as patristics, Central-eastern European and Byzantine hagiography, late antique intellectual history, monastic sexualities. Translator (into Romanian) of Porphyry's Life of Plotinus and of the Minor Prophets for the New Romanian Septuagint. Currently a member of the ESF-OTKA research project coordinated by Gábor Klaniczay, “Communicating Sainthood—Constituting Regions and Nations in East-Central Europe: Tenth to Sixteenth Centuries.”