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185 Alison I. Beach 12  Imagining Libertas Keeping the Bishop at Bay in the Twelfth-Century Chronicle of Petershausen On 27 August 1134, ‘with great joy and exaltation, with hymns and praises ’ , the monks of Petershausen, accompanied by Bishop Ulrich II (1127–38) of Constance, monks from seven other monasteries, and a great crowd of clerics and lay people, carried the relics of their community’s founder, Bishop Gebhard II (979–95), into the newly restored monastery church.1 In preparation for the translation, Abbot Conrad (1127–64) had opened Gebhard ’s tomb in the presence of the bishop and discovered the holy body, 1. Anno a condito monasterio centesimo quinquagesimo secundo advenit Oudalricus episcopus et ex monasteriis patres septem invitati a Counrado abbate iam sepe dicti monasterii. Sed et turba clericorum et monachorum aliorumque fidelium affuit non modica, et cum immani gaudio et exultatione, cum ymnis et laudibus honorifice transtulerunt ossa et cineres beati confessoris Christi atque pontificis Gebehardi de loco prioris sepulchri et in sarchofago posita ambitum monasterii lustraverunt et postea cum magno honore in novo tumulo condiderunt. Casus Monasterii Petrishusensis . Die Chronik des Klosters Petershausen, ed. and trans. Otto Feger (Schwäbische Chroniken der Stauferzeit 3; Lindau and Constance 1956) 208–11 (hereafter cited as CP). For an earlier printed edition of the Chronicle of Petershausen, see MGH Scriptores 20 (Hannover 1868) 21–682. All of the Latin quotations from the Chronicle in this article are from Feger‘s 1956 edition. On the history of Petershausen, see Ilse J. Miscoll-Reckert, Kloster Petershausen als Bischöflich-Konstanzisches Eigenkloster . Studien über das Verhältnis zu Bischof, Adel und Reform vom 10. bis 12. Jahrhundert’ (Konstanzer Geschichts- und Rechtsquellen 18. Neue Folge der Konstanzer Stadtrechtsquellen; Sigmaringen 1973); Arno Borst, Mönche am Bodensee 610–1525 (Darmstadt 1985) 136–54; Manfred Krebs, ‘Quellenstudien zur Geschichte des Klosters Petershausen’, Zeitschrift für die Geschichte des Oberrheins 48 (1935) 463–543; Sibylle Appuhn-Radtke and Annelis Schwarzmann, eds., 1000 Jahre Petershausen . Beiträge zu Kunst und Geschichte der Benediktinerabtei Petershausen in Konstanz (Constance 1983); St. Gebhard und sein Kloster Petershausen. Festschrift zur 1000. Wiederkehr der Inthronisation des Bischofs Gebhard II. von Konstanz, ed. Kath. Pfarrgemeinde St. Gebhard, Konstanz (Constance 1979). On the manuscripts that survive from Petershausen, placed in the context of the history of the monastery, see Wilfrid Werner, Die mittelalterlichen nichtliturgischen Handschriften des Zisterzienserklosters Salem (Wiesbaden 2000) lviii–lxv, 254–59. 186  Alison I. Beach ‘more precious than any costly treasure’ , lying in decaying burial garments that clung to the bones and threatened to disintegrate at the slightest touch. Only a part of Gebhard’s alb and his bright yellow stole remained intact.2 The condition of the body itself was also precarious; the depth of the crypt, combined with its proximity to the Rhine, brought perennial problems with seepage and dampness, and the body had begun to decay. The monks laid Gebhard’s body out to dry in the open air to prevent further deterioration.3 This celebration marked the culmination of an extensive program of restoration and expansion of a number of the monastery’s buildings. Although only 152 years old, Petershausen’s church had been constructed on a weak foundation on soft, swampy land. The walls had cracked on all sides, and storms and wind over the years had worn the western pediment down to bare stone, leaving this face of the basilica ‘black, monstrous, and ugly’ .4 Alarmed by the condition of the building and fearing its collapse, Hugo, a canon of the cathedral, urged Conrad to take action. Masons repaired the cracks and holes in the west wall, and Wernher, a glassmaker who served the monastery, replaced the original window with a new, larger one, and added two smaller windows above it. The frescoes that decorated the interior wall, already disfigured by age and neglect and further damaged in the course of the repairs, were covered over with fresh plaster.5 With the restoration of the church and the translation of its founder’s relics , the decay of both basilica and saintly body was halted. For the anonymous monk of Petershausen who recorded these events, the reverse of the physical decline of the monastery and the rescue of the disintegrating body of its founder constituted a metaphor for reform. His chronicle, begun at the very end of a long period of reform initiated in 1086 by the former Hirsau monk, Bishop Gebhard III (1084–1110), now survives in a single copy, University of Heidelberg, Codex...

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