Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes

In the transition from the Lombard to the Carolingian period, hagiography came to play a fundamental role in the strategies of legitimation and representation of the episcopal churches of the regnum Langobardorum. This article gives an overview of the features, choices, tastes and models of sanctity characteristic of Italian hagiography, against the background of local contexts and political competition. It demonstrates that in the territories under Frankish rule, hagiography represented a chief instrument in the hands of the ecclesiastical elites to shape and use the past in light of the concerns of the present.

The Carolingian Life of Ambrose (De vita et meritis sancti Ambrosii) survives in only one manuscript from St. Gall dated to the late ninth century (Stiftsbibl. 569). This long and complicated hagiographic text (more than 95 pages in the manuscript) is clearly unsuited for liturgical practices. It was written especially for a learned Milanese archbishop capable of decrypting and appreciating an extremely skilled and elaborate compilation. The writing combines different sources (classics, patristics, hagiography, ecclesiastical history, exegesis) to draw a portrait of the patron saint of Milan and father of the Church. My paper shall focus on the use of these sources – above all the Historia Tripartita and Ambrose’s political letters – showing to what extent the anonymous compiler was aware of the contemporary political and ecclesiastical debates about the role of bishops and rulers in a Christian society. He also shared the literary tastes and narrative expedients of the most eminent Carolingian scholars of the time (Hincmar, Paschasius Radbertus, Sedulius Scottus). The last section of my paper shall deal with the use of contemporary textual witnesses as well as late antique and early medieval hagiography highlighting the prestige and fame of Ambrose: the Milanese father is indeed depicted as being at the pinnacle of an illustrious gathering comprising the most prestigious late antique saints as well as biblical heroes.