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147 Charles R. Shrader 10   The Surviving Manuscripts of the Eucharistic Treatises of Heriger of Lobbes 994. Florebant hoc tempore in scientia litterarum in Lothgaringia Herigerus abbas Lobiensis , Adelboldus episcopus Vultrajectensis; in Francia Fulbertus episcopus Carnotensis , Abbo abbas Floriacensis... .1 Thus did Sigebert of Gembloux include Abbot Heriger of Lobbes among the great scholars of the late tenth century. Heriger’s reputation was fully merited by his important contributions in such varied fields as history, hagiography, mathematics, chronology, and hymnology. He also wrote two separate but related treatises on the Eucharist, both of which support a realist interpretation of the sacrament. No fewer than fifteen medieval manuscripts containing either or both of the two treatises survive and bear witness to the spread of Abbot Heriger’s ideas as far as England and the Alps. Heriger of Lobbes (940–1007) Heriger was born at Moerbeke in eastern Flanders shortly after 940 and entered the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter at Lobbes on the Sambre River around 955.2 He rose to become head of the monastic school at Lobbes under Abbot Folquin (965–990) and formed a number of students who later became important men. By 980, his excellence as a teacher and scholar brought him to the notice of the famous Bishop Notker of Liège (972–1008). The bishop and the monk became such close literary collabo1 . Sigebert of Gembloux, Chronicon, MGH SS 4.353. 2. HLF 7.194, and Godefroid Kurth, ‘Heriger’ , Biographie nationale de Belgique, 9 (Bruxelles 1886–1887) 245. 148  Charles R. Shrader rators that it is now difficult to determine the authorship of several works on which they apparently combined their efforts.3 In addition to scholarly collaboration, Heriger was also charged with important missions of confidence concerning the administration of Notker ’s diocese and involving political matters, both in Lotharingia and in Italy, connected with Notker’s role as an important official of the Ottonian empire.4 Notker also involved Heriger in the revival of the cathedral school at Liège, and no small part of the prestige that the school achieved must be attributed to Heriger’s learning and organizational ability. Among his most famous pupils were Burchard, bishop of Worms and a renowned canonist; Adalbold, bishop of Utrecht; the abbot and canonist Olbert of Gembloux; the bishop and canonist Wazo of Liège; Hugo, abbot of Lobbes; and the reformer and abbot Theodoric of St. Hubert.5 At the death of Abbot Folquin in 990, Heriger became abbot of Lobbes. He extended the claustrum walls, constructed a chapel in honor of St. Benedict and an altar for St. Thomas, and enriched the abbey’s store of ornaments , of which he also made an inventory.6 He died at Liège on 31 October 1007 and was buried at Lobbes, where he was later revered as a saint and where miracles were said to have occurred at the site of his tomb.7 Despite the burden of his numerous duties as confidant of Bishop Notker , scholasticus at Liège, and abbot of Lobbes, Heriger produced a large number of works on a wide range of subjects. Among the writings that can definitively be assigned to his authorship are a history of the bishops of Liège, two treatises on mathematics and two on chronology, several hagiographical pieces, and a number of hymns and anthems.8 3. Kurth, ‘Heriger’ 246. 4. Continuator of the Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium, MGH SS 21.309. 5. Cora Elizabeth Lutz, Schoolmasters of the Tenth Century (Hamden 1977) 101. 6. Continuator of the Gesta abbatum Lobbiensium, MGH SS 21.309. 7. Ibid.; Annales Laubienses et Leodiensium, MGH SS 4.181; and Kurth, ‘Heriger’ 246. 8. The Gesta episcoporum Tungrensium et Leodiensium has been edited by Rudolf Koepke in MGH SS 7.134–94, and the Regulae de numerorum abaci rationibus and the Ratio numerorum abaci secundum Herigerum by Nikolai Bubnov in Gerberti postea Silvestri II papas opera mathematica (972–1003) (Berlin 1899) 208–25. For the chronological works, see A. Cordoliani, ‘Abbon de Fleury , Hériger de Lobbes, et Gerland de Besançon sur l’ère de l’Incarnation de Denys le Petit’ , RHE 44 (1949) 471–72. The Epistola ad quondam Hugonem monachum is edited in PL 139.1129–36. Heriger ’s other chronological work, the Dialogus de dissonantia ecclesiae de adventu Domini, is lost. For Heriger’s hagiographical works, see nos. 335, 1184, 2251, 3733, 4331, 4700–4706, 7115–16, and 8046 in Bibliotheca hagiographica Latina antiquae et...

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