CulturalMemoryandtheResourcesofthepast

THE IMPACT OF CHURCH HISTORY AND EXEGESIS

The project will provide two case studies for the reception of Late Ancient and Byzantine models of the emperor as a Christian ruler in the West, as provided in ecclesiastical literature and Church history. It is thus closely related both to the Bavaria Project in Utrecht, and to the project concerned with the Historia Tripartita of Cassiodor in Cambridge, establishing a valuable link with these two projects. It provides work contracts to two Viennese researchers who can use intervals between other, related projects to focus their expertise on the specific questions pursued in the HERA CRP.

The first case study, to be carried out by Helmut Reimitz, will focus on the reception of the Church History of Rufinus in the Carolingian period. At the end of the 4^th century, Rufinus translated the Church history of Eusebius into Latin and brought it up to date, changing the perspective of the work to make it suitable for a Western audience. Whereas Eusebius had adapted Christianity to the Roman Empire, Rufinus defined the political horizon of the empire by Christendom. Thus, he made the text suitable for a Carolingian reception, offering complex models of Christian empire.

In the second case study Marianne Pollheimer will examine the Carolingian reception of the Instituta regularia divinae legis written by Junillus Africanus in the 6^th century, which survive in a respectable number of manuscripts from the 8^th and 9^th century.^[1] Their role and reception in the Carolingian period, however, have not yet been thoroughly studied. Junillus combined the principles of orthodox doctrine with a discussion of the nature of law and governance. The manuscript evidence indicates a strong interest in the text in Western centres of religious and political power, for instance in monasteries like St. Gall, Reichenau, St. Emmeram in Regensburg, Salzburg, St. Amand, Bobbio, key institutions for the education of the Carolingian clergy and closely linked to the imperial court, thus relating theological uses of the text with political concerns.

Both studies will be developed over a shorter span of time within the frame of the project. They will build on previous work on these texts, and make it fruitful for the use of the project. Work for the Cultural Memory project will include a close reading of the texts and a comprehensive evaluation of the manuscript transmission with specific regard to the project design. In the case of Rufinus, special attention will be devoted to BAV, Pal.lat. 829, a manuscript from Lorsch with interesting interpolations that cannot be accessed through the edition by Th. Mommsen. In the case of Junillus, attention will be devoted to the five codices from Bavaria, the two in St. Gall and two from the Reichenau, to ask what explains the extraordinary popularity of this text in the Carolingian Empire, and specifically in Bavaria and the Bodensee region.

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