Gripla - 20.12.2013, Síða 59

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opinions on the date of his death range from 1196 to 1204, and nearly
every year in between seems to have its partisans.44 Much of this confu-
sion derives from the apparent conflation by some scholars of Absalon of
springiersbach with another Absalon, who was abbot of saint-Victor from
1198 to 1203.45 If, as Poirel asserts, the election of Absalon’s successor as
abbot of springiersbach was occasioned by his death, he must have died in
1196.46 If, however, he lost his position because he retired or was deposed,
he may have lived until 1204, as Ziegler proposes.47
Absalon’s literary remains include a series of fifty sermons for the feast
days of the liturgical year.48 these Sermones festivales survive in manu-
scripts from both trier and saint-Victor, as well as in libraries as far afield
as Madrid and Milan.49 Absalon seems to have composed or revised at
least some of them at springiersbach, since he gives the German transla-
tion of a Latin term in one of them.50 the sermons are quite learned and
display an impressive familiarity with classical philosophy and literature,
patristics, and the works of his predecessors at the school of saint-Victor.51
Absalon’s exegetical approach is highly allegorical and numerical, and many
of his sermons are based on consecutive or nested sets of two-, three-, and
fourfold divisions: “sunt etenim tres cœli, quos Christum secundum hu-
manam naturam ascendisse fideli devotione tenendum est…”; “Quatuor enim
sunt in bove per quæ doctoribus ecclesiæ recte comparatur…”; and so on.52
Augustinus als Vorbild der Predigt des Absalon von Springiersbach (Würzburg: Augustinus-
Verlag, 1998), 45–46.
44 Poirel, “L’école de saint-Victor,” 201–202; Ziegler, Augustinus als Vorbild, 45–46; Pierre
Courcelle, “La culture antique d’Absalon de saint-Victor,” Journal des savants (1972): 270.
45 Courcelle (“La culture antique”) makes this error, as do many earlier scholars, including
fourier Bonnard in his Histoire de l’Abbaye royale et de l’ordre des chanoines réguliers de St-
Victor de Paris, vol. 1 (Paris: A. savaète, 1904), 269. Poirel (“L’école de saint-Victor”) and
Ziegler (Augustinus als Vorbild) correctly distinguish between the two, as does j. Prelog,
“Absalon v. springiersbach,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters, 1:col. 55.
46 Poirel, “L’école de saint-Victor,” 202.
47 Ziegler, Augustinus als Vorbild, 46.
48 PL 211, cols. 11A–294d.
49 Ziegler, Augustinus als Vorbild, 51. see also the comments of Casimir oudin, which Migne
uses as a preface to the Sermones festivales in PL 211.
50 PL 211, col. 181C. see Poirel, “L’école de saint-Victor,” 202.
51 on Absalon’s style see especially Courcelle, “La culture antique” and Ziegler, Augustinus als
Vorbild.
52 PL 211, cols. 182d and 261A.
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