Sovereigns and Saints: Narrative Modes of Constructing Rulership and Sainthood in Latin and German (Rhyme) Chronicles of the High and the Late Middle Ages ed. by Uta Goerlitz (review)

In this collection of essays edited by and featuring an article written by Uta Goerlitz, rulers and saints are examined as “cultural guiding images” (p. 173) in German and Latin chronicles from the tenth through, primarily, the thirteenth centuries. Since the content and the approaches fall within the “largely neglected contact zone of historical and literary research” (p. 176) transdisciplinary approaches from these areas intersect in examining the depiction of such chronologically disparate rulers as Charlemagne, Constantine, and Godfrey of Bouillon. Of related concern is the development in chronicle portrayals of a so-called “Latin-vernacular or Latin-German bilingualism.” (pp. 176–77).

In the first essay, Andreas Hammer compares the portrayal of Bishop Ulrich of Augsburg and Emperor Henry II in vitae and chronicles at various intervals after the death of both men in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Central to Hammer’s depiction of both figures as saints was their involvement in historically significant episodes necessarily adapted to hagiographic narrative. Ulrich’s period of service as bishop coincided neatly with the rule of Otto I. In the earliest vita written shortly before Ulrich’s canonization, Hammer points to the “bishop’s participation in military conflicts” (p. 181), specifically in the Battle of Lechfeld in 955. His assistance in armed defense by holding the enemy troops at the city gates before Otto’s arrival shows him primarily as a “military strategist” (p. 181). Hammer finds this image later diminished in historical chronicles, for which Ulrich is, at best, a pious “intermediary” (p. 183) assisting the king’s achievements. This inversion, or later dehistorization of the saint despite his connection to a historical event, is reversed once again in vernacular versions of the Ulrich legend during the fifteenth century. Now an interest in local history prompts a new version of Ulrich’s vita, reestablishing his “decisive contributions … against the Hungarians.” Hammer concludes that “source criticism” (p. 185) provided the impetus for this humanist reinterpretation of Ulrich’s role, since the early Latin vita was considered to be the oldest, and hence most authentic, testament. Showing at first a distinctly different trajectory is the balance of piety and military acumen in biographical representations of Emperor Henry II. Given that Henry’s canonization took place a century or so after his death, at the start only historiographical narratives included mention of the famous ruler. With this fact established, Hammer’s research examines Henry’s alliance with the heathen Lutizians in military campaigns directed against the Christian Polish King Boleslaw Chrobry. Hagiographic expectations dictated a subsequent change. Since Henry’s reliance on a non-Christian group of supporters in a political struggle would belie his pious depiction in later vitae, the Lutizians—also described generically as Wends—were restylized as the enemy. Hammer refers here to the vernacular vita by Ebernand von Erfurt and the narrated destruction of Merseburg, established by Otto after his defeat of the Hungarians at Lechfeld. The contention that association with Otto’s earlier, holy victory would exculpate Henry in both a historiographical and hagiographic context is supported by reference to relics carried by Henry in his alleged struggle on behalf of Christianity. Hammer concludes that the “Latin and German vitae address a total re-interpretation of Henry’s rather questionable part in the campaign against the Slavs” (p. 188). Again, only in later centuries do historical and hagiographic narratives diverge, as Sebastian Franck’s post-Reformation Germaniae Chronicon attempts to rectify the accounts of Henry’s less than pious military record.

Tensions, or lack of the same, between the understanding and representation of both history and hagiography pervade the examination of...