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Corbie Abbey is a former Benedictine monastery in Corbie, Picardy, France, dedicated to Saint Peter. It was founded by Balthild, the widow of Clovis II, who had monks sent from Luxeuil. The Abbey of Corbie became celebrated both for its library and the scriptorium.
It was founded in 661 under the Merovingian royal patronage of Balthild, widow of Clovis II, and her son Clotaire III. The first monks came from Luxeuil Abbey, which had been founded by Saint Columbanus in 590, and the Irish respect for classical learning fostered there was carried forward at Corbie. Theodefrid was the first abbot. [1] The rule of the founders was based on the Benedictine rule, as Columbanus had modified it.
Its scriptorium came to be one of the centres of work of manuscript illumination when the art was still fairly new in western Europe. The clear and legible hand known as Carolingian minuscule was also developed at the scriptorium at Corbie, [2] as well as a distinctive style of illumination. In this early Merovingian period, the work of Corbie was innovative in that it showed pictures of people, for example, Saint Jerome. Dr. Tino Licht of Heidelberg University discovered a manuscript from Corbie Abbey written in the Caroline minuscule that predates Charlemagne's rule. According to Dr. Licht, "They were trying it out. In the Middle Ages a script like this ...was developed as part of the living tradition of a scriptorium. In the 8th century Corbie was something akin to a laboratory for new scripts." [3]
Besides gifts of estates to support the abbey, many exemptions were granted to the abbots, to free them from interference from local bishops: the exemptions were confirmed in 855 by Pope Benedict III. The abbots ranked as counts and had the privilege of a mint.
Corbie continued its intimate links with the royal house of the Carolingians. In 774 Desiderius, last King of the Lombards, was exiled here after his defeat by Charlemagne. From 850 to 854 Charles, the future Archbishop of Mainz, was confined here. Members of the Carolingian house sometimes served as abbots; the ninth abbot was Saint Adalard, one of Charlemagne's cousins. Under Adalard, the monastic school of Corbie attained great celebrity, and about the same time it sent forth a colony to found the Abbey of Corvey in Saxony. [1] In the ninth century Corbie was larger than St. Martin's Abbey at Tours, or Saint Denis at Paris. At its height, it housed 300 monks. Three of Corbie's scholars were Ratramnus (died c. 868), Radbertus Paschasius (died 865) and Hadoard.
Saint Gerald of Sauve-Majeure was born in Corbie and became a child oblate at the Abbey, where he then became a monk and served as cellarer. He later went on to found Grande-Sauve Abbey. [4]
In 1137 a fire destroyed the monastic buildings but they were rebuilt on a larger scale. Saint Colette of Corbie's father worked as a carpenter at the Abbey. After her parents died, in 1402 she joined the Third Order of St. Francis, [5] and became a hermit under the direction of the Abbot of Corbie, and lived near the abbey church. She later founded the Colettine Poor Clares.
Commendatory abbots were introduced in 1550, amongst those that held the benefice was Cardinal Mazarin. The somewhat drooping fortunes of the abbey were revived in 1618, when it was one of the first to be incorporated into the new Congregation of Saint Maur. At its suppression in 1790 the buildings were partly demolished, but the church remains to this day, with its imposing portal and western towers. [1]
Corbie was renowned for its library, which was assembled from as far as Italy, and for its scriptorium. The contents of its library are known from catalogues of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In addition to its patristic writings, it is recognized as an important center for the transmission of the works of Antiquity to the Middle Ages. An inventory (of perhaps the 11th century) lists the church history of Hegesippus, now lost, among other extraordinary treasures.
Among students of Tertullian, the library is of interest as it contained a number of unique copies of Tertullian's works, the so-called corpus Corbiense and included some of his unorthodox Montanist treatises, as well as two works by Novatian issued pseudepigraphically under Tertullian's name. The origin of this group of non-orthodox texts has not satisfactorily been identified.
Among students of medieval architecture and engineering, such as are preserved in the notebooks of Villard de Honnecourt, Corbie is of interest as the center of renewed interest in geometry and surveying techniques, both theoretical and practical, as they had been transmitted from Euclid through the Geometria of Boethius and works by Cassiodorus (Zenner).
In 1638, Cardinal Richelieu ordered the transfer of 400 manuscripts transferred to the library of the monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. During the French Revolution, the library was closed and the last of the monks dispersed: 300 manuscripts still at Corbie were moved to Amiens, 15 km to the west. Those at St-Germain des Prés were released on the market, and many rare manuscripts were obtained by Russian diplomat Peter P. Dubrovsky and sent to St. Petersburg. Other Corbie manuscripts are at the Bibliothèque Nationale . Over two hundred manuscripts from the great library at Corbie are known to survive.
Jean Mabillon, the father of paleography, had been a monk at Corbie. The village of Corbie grew up round Corbie Abbey and was close to the fighting during the Battle of the Somme. Between 22 April and 10 May 1918, Corbie was heavily shelled by the Germans and the church sustained many direct hits. [6]
This list is drawn from the Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie Ecclesiastique[ full citation needed ].
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Monastery of Corbie". Catholic Encyclopedia . New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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Ratramnus was a Frankish monk of the monastery of Corbie, near Amiens in northern France, and a Carolingian theologian known best for his writings on the Eucharist and predestination. His Eucharistic treatise De corpore et sanguine Domini was a counterpoint to his abbot Paschasius Radbertus’s realist Eucharistic theology. Ratramnus was also known for his defense of the monk Gottschalk, whose theology of double predestination was the center of much controversy in 9th-century France and Germany. In his own time, Ratramnus was perhaps best known for his Against the Objections of the Greeks who Slandered the Roman Church, a response to the Photian schism and defense of the filioque addition to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. The writings of Ratramnus influenced the Protestant reformation of the 16th century.
Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one region to another. It is thought to have originated before 778 CE at the scriptorium of the Benedictine monks of Corbie Abbey, about 150 kilometres north of Paris, and then developed by Alcuin of York for wide use in the Carolingian Renaissance. Alcuin himself still wrote in a script which was a precursor to the Carolingian minuscule, which slowly developed over three centuries. He was most likely responsible for copying and preserving the manuscripts and upkeep of the script. It was used in the Holy Roman Empire between approximately 800 and 1200. Codices, pagan and Christian texts, and educational material were written in Carolingian minuscule.
The Chancellor of France, also known as the Grand Chancellor or Lord Chancellor, was the officer of state responsible for the judiciary of the Kingdom of France. The Chancellor was responsible for seeing that royal decrees were enrolled and registered by the sundry parlements, provincial appellate courts. However, since the Chancellor was appointed for life, and might fall from favour, or be too ill to carry out his duties, his duties would occasionally fall to his deputy, the Keeper of the Seals of France.
Paschasius Radbertus (785–865) was a Carolingian theologian and the abbot of Corbie, a monastery in Picardy founded in 657 or 660 by the queen regent Bathilde with a founding community of monks from Luxeuil Abbey. His most well-known and influential work is an exposition on the nature of the Eucharist written around 831, entitled De Corpore et Sanguine Domini. He was canonized in 1073 by Pope Gregory VII. His feast day is 26 April.
Adalard of Corbie was the son of Bernard who was the son of Charles Martel and half-brother of Pepin; Charlemagne was his cousin. He is recognised as a saint within the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church.
Corbie is a commune of the Somme department in Hauts-de-France in northern France.
The Princely Abbey of Corvey is a former Benedictine abbey and ecclesiastical principality now in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was one of the half-dozen self-ruling princely abbeys of the Holy Roman Empire from the Late Middle Ages until 1792 when Corvey was elevated to a prince-bishopric. Corvey, whose territory extended over a vast area, was in turn secularized in 1803 in the course of the German mediatisation and absorbed into the newly created Principality of Nassau-Orange-Fulda. Originally built in 822 and 885 and remodeled in the Baroque period, the abbey is an exceptional example of Carolingian architecture, the oldest surviving example of a westwork, and the oldest standing medieval structure in Westphalia. The original architecture of the abbey, with its vaulted hall and galleries encircling the main room, heavily influenced later western Romanesque and Gothic architecture. The inside of the westwork contains the only known wall paintings of ancient mythology with Christian interpretation in Carolingian times. The former abbey church was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014.
Bernard or Bernhard de Saint Quentin (d'Herstal), Abby of von St. Quentin, Abbot of St. Quentin (c.720-787) was a son of Charles Martel by his mistress Ruodhaid.
Fleury Abbey (Floriacum) in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Loiret, France, founded in about 640, is one of the most celebrated Benedictine monasteries of Western Europe, and possesses the relics of St. Benedict of Nursia. Its site on the banks of the Loire has always made it easily accessible from Orléans, a center of culture unbroken since Roman times. In 2010, the abbey had over forty monks led by the abbot Etienne Ricaud.
The Abbey of Echternach is a Benedictine monastery in the town of Echternach, in eastern Luxembourg. The abbey was founded in the 7th century by St Willibrord, the patron saint of Luxembourg. For three hundred years, it benefited from the patronage of a succession of rulers, and was the most powerful institution in Luxembourg.
Saint Gerald of Sauve-Majeure, OSB, also known, from his place of origin, as Gerald of Corbie, was a Benedictine abbot.
Chelles Abbey was a Frankish monastery founded around 657/660 during the early medieval period. It was intended initially as a monastery for women; then its reputation for great learning grew, and when men wanted to follow the monastic life, a parallel male community was established, creating a double monastery.
Corbie is a commune of the Somme département in northern France.
Condat Abbey was founded in the 420s in the valley of Bienne, in the Jura mountains, in modern-day France. Condat became the capital of Haut Jura. The founders were local monks, Romanus, who had been ordained by St. Hilary of Arles in 444, and his younger brother Lupicinus of Lyon (Lupicin); the easily defended isolated site they chose for the separate cells in which they and their followers would live in emulation of the Eastern manner of the Desert Fathers was on a stony headland at the confluence of the rivers Bienne and Tacon. Though the site still contained Roman ruins, it was accounted a 'desert' in the Life of the Fathers of the Jura, which contains the early saint's lives. Romanus continued founding other abbeys, such as Romainmôtier Abbey at Romainmôtier-Envy, which retains his name. Not far away at La Balme, Yole, the sister of Romanus and Lupicinus, founded her nunnery.
Wala was a son of Bernard, son of Charles Martel, and one of the principal advisers of his cousin Charlemagne, of Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious, and of Louis's son Lothair I. He succeeded his brother Adalard as abbot of Corbie and its new daughter foundation, Corvey, in 826 or 827. His feast day is 31 August
Charroux Abbey is a ruined monastery in Charroux, in the Vienne department of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, western France.
Notre-Dame de Soissons was a nunnery dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Soissons. It was founded during the Merovingian era, between 658 and 666, but the community was dissolved and the building partially demolished during the French Revolution (1789–99).
Merovingian illumination is the term for the continental Frankish style of illumination in the late seventh and eight centuries, named for the Merovingian dynasty. Ornamental in form, the style consists of initials constructed from lines and circles based on Late Antique illumination, title pages with arcades and crucifixes. Figural images were almost totally absent. From the eight century, zoomorphic decoration began to appear and become so dominant that in some manuscripts from Chelles whole pages are made up of letters formed from animals. Unlike the contemporary Insular illumination with its rampant decoration, the Merovingian style aims for a clean page.
The royal household of the early kings of the Franks is the subject of considerable discussion and remains controversial. This discussion is aimed at identifying the major categories of participants in the administration and those who made the major historical impacts. Every king of the Franks from Clovis I to Charles the Bald had a large cadre of advisors and bureaucrats that helped implement their regime. These supporters of the crown are frequently unknown, but often are ancestors of the later rulers of France. This is not intended to be a complete list of those supporting the kings but to serve as a guide for further study. A general discussion of the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties can be found in the associated main articles. See also Government of the Carolingian Empire.
Cerisy Abbey, otherwise the Abbey of Saint Vigor, located in Cerisy-la-Forêt, Manche, France, was an important Benedictine monastery of Normandy.
