Schottenklöster: Irische Benediktinerkonvente im hochmittelalterlichen Deutschland by Helmut Flachenecker (review)

530 BOOK REVIEWS after some initial attempts to contain these movements of the Spirit, many of them were increasingly marginalized and repressed.Yet the dialectic was never completely sharp: recent research by Fiona Robb suggests that Innocent III, through his intimacy with Joachim's disciple Ranier, was open to the vision; Bonaventure could not shut it out, even while fighting its more dangerous implications within his order; the wistful figure of the Papa Angelicus haunted western churchmen right down to the Renaissance period. The third point follows from this. In 1975 (essay II) McGinn arraigned this reviewer for perfunctory treatment of popular apocalyptic movements and argued that"to date there are really no successful interpretations of the social and political roots of medieval apocalypticism." This is still broadly true, though there have been some limited analyses of individual popular movements. We still need a full exploration of this theme, not only for a deeper understanding of the pressures under which the medieval church operated, but also because the tension between organized religious structures and charismatic movements remains an abiding problem. Marjorie Reeves St. Anne's College, Oxford Schottenklöster: Irische Benediktinerkonvente im hochmittelalterlichen Deutschland. By Helmut Flachenecker. [Quellen und Forschungen aus dem Gebiet der Geschichte, Neue Folge, Volume 18.] (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. 1995. Pp. 402. DM 48,- paperbound.) Anyone who has spent some time inVienna has seen the Schottenkloster, the. only still-functioning,former abbey ofIrish Benedictines in the German-speaking world. The Schotten have been the subject of considerable scholarly as well as popular misinformation, caused in part by the fact that the high-medieval Scoti were Irish, but that three of the monasteries were assigned to exiled Scottish Catholics in the sixteenth century. However, the real reason for the confusion lies in the sources themselves. Few documents survive, and the historian is thus forced to rely on the Vita S. Mariant, written shortly after 1 180, a century after the "founder's" death, and the Libellus de fundacione ecclesiae Consecrati Petri, drafted in the 1250's. Both are highly tendentious and inaccurate works that were designed to bolster the claim of the abbot of St. James in Regensburg to be the head of the congregation ofIrish monks. These high-medieval sources must be supplemented with necrologies, the oldest of which dates only to the fifteenth century, and with suspect early modern histories of the monasteries. The latter propagated the erroneous view that the abbeys were founded by Scots, who were replaced in the fourteenth century by Irish monks who were responsible for the houses' rapid decline. Helmut Flachenecker has sifted through this material to reconstruct the history of the Schotten during the fourth and last phase of Irish monasticism on the Continent. BOOK REVIEWS 531 After a brief stay in Bamberg, Marianus and his companions, who were on a pilgrimage to Rome, decided in 1070 to remain in Regensburg. King Henry IV took under his protection in 1089 the community of Irish hermits who lived at the church of Weih Sankt Peter. A second community formed at St. James, to which HenryV granted a charter in 1 1 12, andWeih Sankt Peter became a priory of St. James. The foundation of the two houses was part of an antipapal reform movement sponsored by the bishop and burghers of Regensburg. A variety of patrons then called upon monks from St. James to establish Irish monasteries: Erfurt by an imperial ministerial (1136); Würzburg by the bishop (1138); Nuremberg by King Conrad III (1140); Constance by the bishop (1142); Eichst ätt by the cathedral provost (ll48/49);Vienna by Duke Henry II of Austria (1155/61); and Memmingen by Duke WeIfVI (1178/81). In addition, the congregation had two Irish priories at Cashel and Ross Carberry, which recruited novices for the German houses; a settlement in Kiev that survived until the Mongol onslaught; and a priory in Kelheim, where the monks prayed for Duke Louis of Bavaria, who had been murdered in 1231. The monks were dependent on Ireland for donations as well as recruits, and supported themselves by copying manuscripts or by working in episcopal or ducal chancelleries. Pope Lucius III first referred in 1 185 to the...