Die Traditionen des Kollegiatstifts St. Kastulus in Moosburg Edited by Klaus Höflinger (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 431 lower clergy as a body, questions broached by the contemporary Véneto school of ecclesiastical historians led by Antonio Rigon, remains in need of much further study, as Brentano recognizes. This opus of Brentano is indeed "eccentric," as the author says (p. xvii): Meritoriously in an age when some medievalists don't know Latin, in his text this author reproduces most of the original texts he describes in that very language. Perhaps more problematically, the text at times indulges a certain baroque verbality and punctuation that could be simpler. But this exhaustive study of a backwater medieval Italian diocese by such an unexcelled kenner of medieval Italian ecclesiastical history deserves all the praise it will receive, and this reader enjoyed and learned from every page. I too now have not only some knowledge of the Rieti diocese in the Middle Ages, but have formed an affection for that town that will lead me to it my next time in Italy. Richard C. Trexler State University ofNew York at Binghamton Die Traditionen des Kollegiatstifts St. Kastulus in Moosburg. Edited by Klaus Höflinger. [Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen Geschichte, Neue Folge, Band XLII, Erster Teil] (Munich: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung . 1994. Pp. 65*, 374. Four black-and-white plates. Paperback.) The monastery of St. Castulus, situated in Moosburg, less than twenty kilometers northeast of Freising, was mentioned for the first time around 800 in the Salzburg book of confraternity. The circumstances surrounding its foundation several decades earlier are obscure. It had been transformed into a collegiate church by 895, when Arnulf of Carinthia conferred it to Freising as a proprietary church. (Scholars had previously thought that the abandonment of the monastic life occurred only in the early eleventh century. ) The extant Traditionsbuch was started shortly after 1202 in order, as the prologue states (entry no. 12), to preserve in a single volume a record of Moosburg's property transactions, but the scribe (Ml) who compiled the first part of the codex (through entry no. 190a in the present edition) clearly used older collections because entry no. 35, which Klaus Höflinger dates circa 1090/98 to 1133, indicates that the names of the witnesses had been recorded in the "libro testificationis." The earliest notice is dated in fact 1039/52. Twentythree scribes made an additional seventy-four protocolic entries between 1 202 and 1291. However, only one notice is dated later than 1264. Höflinger's edition adheres to the high scholarly standards of this series. In the introduction he discusses previous editions, describes the codex, identifies the twenty-four scribes, explains the origins and structure of the Traditionsbuch , analyzes its formulaic passages and legal content, provides a briefhistory of the house until its conveyance to Freising, lists its abbots and provosts, and 432 BOOK REVIEWS compares his numbering of the entries with their placement in the manuscript and in the two previously published editions by Max Freiherr von Freyberg. (Oddly, the latter published two slightly different editions of the Traditionsbuch in 1840.) Every entry is preceded by a lengthy headnote in which Höflinger dates the entry, lists the relevant literature, identifies the witnesses, etc. The planned second volume will contain Moosburg's sealed charters, which begin in the late ninth century, and the Urbar of 1359, its oldest manorial register. In short, Höflinger's edition is a valuable resource for studying the social structure of the Bavarian heartland, in particular the ministerialages of the bishops of Freising, the Wittelsbachs, and the counts of Moosburg, who were the advocates of the church. Nevertheless, I had a number of reservations about the edition. First, I wish that Höflinger had extended his history of the house from 895 until the end of the thirteenth century, that is, the period with which the Traditionsbuch deals, and discussed such topics as the social origins of the canons and the house's relations with its advocate (the counts' residence adjoined the church [no. 199])· In particular, I am curious about the circumstances surrounding the compilation of the Traditionsbuch. Frequently, such collections were startedwhen a house was reformed (for example, in SalzburgwhenArchbishop Conrad I introduced the Augustinian Rule into...