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Pope Benedict XVI- General Audiences |
General
Audience
On Rabanus Maurus
"A Truly Extraordinary Personality of the Latin West"
H.H. Benedict XVI
June 3, 2009
www.zenit.org
Dear brothers and sisters:
Today I would like to speak about a truly extraordinary personality of
the Latin West: the monk Rabanus Maurus. Together with men such as
Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede and Ambrose Auperto, of whom I
have already spoken in previous catechesis, [Rabanus Maurus] knew how to
stay in contact with the great culture of the ancient scholars and the
Christian fathers during the centuries of the High Middle Ages. Often
remembered as "praeceptor Germaniae," Rabanus Maurus was extraordinarily
productive. With his entirely exceptional capacity for work, he was
perhaps the person who most contributed to maintaining alive the
theological, exegetical and spiritual culture to which successive
centuries would pay recourse. Great personalities from the world of the
monks, such as Peter Damian, Peter the Venerable and Bernard Clairvaux,
make reference to him, as do an ever more consistent number of "clerics"
of the secular clergy, who in the 12th and 13th centuries gave life to
one of the most beautiful and fruitful flourishing of human thought.
Born in Mainz around the year 780, Rabanus entered the monastery when he
was still very young: the name Maurus was given him precisely in
reference to the young Maurus who, according to the second book of St.
Gregory the Great's "Dialogues," had been given at a very young age to
the abbot Benedict of Nursia by his own parents, who were Roman nobles.
This precocious introduction of Rabanus as "puer oblatus" in the
Benedictine monastic world, and the fruits that it gave for his human,
cultural and spiritual growth, opened up very interesting possibilities
not only for the life of the monks, but also for the whole of society of
his time, normally referred to as "Carolingian." Speaking of them, or
perhaps of himself, Rabanus Maurus writes: "There are some who have had
the fortune of having been introduced in the knowledge of Scripture from
a very young age ('a cunabulis suis') and have been nourished so well by
the food that the holy Church has offered them that they can be
promoted, with an adequate education, to the most elevated sacred
orders" (PL 107, col 419BC).
The extraordinary culture that distinguished Rabanus Maurus very quickly
brought the attention of the greats of his time. He became a counselor
of princes. He committed himself to guaranteeing the unity of the
empire, and on a wider cultural level, he never denied one who asked for
a well-thought-out answer, preferentially inspired in the Bible and in
the texts of the holy fathers. Despite the fact that he was first
elected abbot of the famous monastery of Fulda, and afterward archbishop
of his native city of Mainz, he did not leave aside his studies,
demonstrating with the example of his life that one can be at the same
time available for others without neglecting because of this an adequate
time of reflection, study and meditation.
In this way, Rabanus Maurus became an exegete, philosopher, poet, pastor
and man of God. The dioceses of Fulda, Mainz, Limburgo and Breslau
venerate him as a saint or blessed. His works fill six volumes of the "Patrologia
Latina" of Migne. He probably composed one of the most beautiful and
well-known hymns of the Latin Church, the "Veni Creator Spiritus," an
extraordinary synthesis of Christian pneumatology. The first theological
commitment of Rabanus is expressed, in fact, in the form of poetry and
had as a theme the mystery of the holy cross in a work titled, "De
Laudibus Sanctae Crucis," conceived to propose not only conceptual
content, but also exquisitely artistic motivations using both the poetic
form and the pictorial form within the same manuscript codex.
Iconographically proposing between the lines of his writing the image of
the crucified Christ, he writes: "This is the image of the Savior who,
with the position of his members, makes sacred for us the most sweet and
dear form of the cross so that, believing in his name and obeying his
commandments, we might obtain eternal life thanks to his passion.
Because of this, each time that we raise our eyes to the cross, we
remember him who suffered for us to sever us from the power of darkness,
accepting death to make us heirs of eternal life (Lib. 1, Fig. 1, PL 107
col 151 C).
This method of harmonizing all the arts, the intelligence, the heart and
the sentiment, which came from the East, would be highly developed in
the West, reaching unreachable heights in the miniate codices of the
Bible and in other works of faith and of art, which flourished in Europe
until the invention of the press and even afterward. In any case, it
shows that Rabanus Maurus had an extraordinary awareness of the need to
involve in the experience of faith, not only the mind and the heart, but
also the sentiments through these other elements of aesthetic taste and
the human sensitivity that brings man to enjoy truth with all of his
being, "spirit, soul and body." This is important: The faith is not only
thought; it touches the whole being. Given that God made man with flesh
and blood and entered into the tangible world, we have to try to
encounter God with all the dimensions of our being. In this way, the
reality of God, through faith, penetrates in our being and transforms
it.
For this reason, Rabanus Maurus concentrated his attention above all on
the liturgy, as the synthesis of all the dimension of our perception of
reality. This intuition of Rabanus Maurus makes him extraordinarily
relevant to our times. He also left the famous "Carmina" proposals to be
used above all in liturgical celebrations. In fact, Rabanus' interest
for the liturgy can be entirely taken for granted given that before all,
he was a monk. Nevertheless, he did not dedicate himself to the art of
poetry as an end in itself, but rather he used art and whatever other
type of knowledge to go deeper in the Word of God. Because of this, he
tried with all his might and rigor to introduce to his contemporaries,
but above all to the ministers (bishops, priests and deacons), to the
understanding of the profound theological and spiritual significance of
all the elements of the liturgical celebration.
In this way, he tried to understand and present to the others the
theological meanings hidden in the rites, paying recourse to the Bible
and the tradition of the fathers. He did not hesitate to cite, out of
honesty and also to give greater weight to his explanations, the
patristic sources to which he owed his knowledge. He made use of them
freely and with attentive discernment, continuing the development of the
patristic thought. At the end of the "First Letter," addressed to a
chorbishop of the Diocese of Mainz, for example, after having responded
to requests to clarify the behavior that should be had in the carrying
out of pastoral responsibility, he writes: "We have written you all of
this just as we have deduced it from the sacred Scriptures and from the
canons of the fathers. Now then, you, most holy man, make your decisions
as seems best to you, case by case, trying to moderate your evaluation
in such a way that discretion is guaranteed in everything, since she is
the mother of all virtues" ("Epistulae", I, PL 112, col 1510 C). In this
way is seen the continuity of the Christian faith, which has its
beginnings in the Word of God: It is, nevertheless, always alive, it
develops and is expressed in new ways, always in harmony with the entire
construction, the whole edifice of the faith.
Given that the word of God is an integral part of the liturgical
celebration, Rabanus Maurus dedicated himself to the latter with the
greatest effort during his entire existence. He wrote exegetical
explanations for almost all of the biblical books of the Old and New
Testaments with a clearly pastoral objective, which he justified with
words such as this: "I have written this, ... synthesizing explanations
and proposals of many others, to offer a service to the poor reader who
doesn't have many books at his disposal, but also to help those who
haven't yet completely understood the meanings discovered by the
fathers" ("Commentariorum in Matthaeum praefatio," PL 107, col. 727D).
In fact, in commenting on the biblical texts he resorts quite often to
the ancient fathers, with a special predilection for Jerome, Ambrose,
Augustine and Gregory the Great.
His sharp pastoral sensibility carried him afterward to confront one of
the problems that most interested the faithful and sacred ministers of
his time: that of penance. He compiled "Penitentials" -- that's what he
called them -- in which, according to the sensibilities of the age, he
enumerated the sins and their corresponding penance, using, in the
measure possible, motivations taken from the Bible, of the decisions of
the councils, and of the decrees of the popes. Of these texts the
"Carolingians" are also useful in his intention to reform the Church and
society. Works such as "De disciplina ecclesiastica" and "De
institutione clericorum" respond to this pastoral objective. In these,
citing above all Augustine, Rabanus explained to simple people and to
the clergy of his own diocese the fundamental elements of Christian
faith: They were a type of small catechisms.
I would like to conclude the presentation of this great "man of the
Church" citing some of his words that reflect his deep conviction: "He
who neglects contemplation is deprived of the vision of the light of
God; he who is carried away with worry and allows his thoughts to be
crushed by the tumult of the things of the world is condemned to the
absolute impossibility of penetrating the secrets of the invisible God"
(Lib. I, PL 112, col. 1263A). I believe that Rabanus Maurus addressed
these words to us today: while at work, with its frenetic rhythms, and
during vacation, we have to reserve moments for God. [We have to] open
our lives up to him, directing a thought to him, a reflection, a brief
prayer. And above all, we mustn't forget that Sunday is the day of Our
Lord, the day of the liturgy, [the day] to perceive in the beauty of our
churches, in the sacred music and in the Word of God, the same beauty of
our God, allowing him to enter into our being. Only in this way is our
life made great; it is truly made a life.
[Translation by ZENIT]
[At the end of the audience, the Pope greeted the pilgrims in various
languages. In English, he said:]
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Our catechesis today deals with another great monastic figure of the
High Middle Ages, Rabanus Maurus. Rabanus entered monastic life at a
young age as an oblate, was trained in the liberal arts and received a
broad formation in the Christian tradition.
As the Abbot of Fulda and then as Archbishop of Mainz, he contributed
through his vast learning and pastoral zeal to the unity of the Empire
and the transmission of a Christian culture deeply nourished by the
Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church. From his youth he wrote
poetry, and he is probably the author of the famous hymn Veni Creator
Spiritus.
Indeed, his first theological work was a poem on the Holy Cross, in
which the poetry was accompanied by an illuminated representation of the
Crucified Christ. This medieval method of joining poetry to pictorial
art sought to lift the whole person -- mind, heart and senses -- to the
contemplation of the truth contained in God’s word. In the same spirit
Rabanus sought to transmit the richness of the Christian cultural
tradition through his prolific commentaries on the Scriptures, his
explanations of the liturgy and his pastoral writings. This great man of
the Church continues to inspire us by his example of an active ministry
nourished by study, profound contemplation and constant prayer.
I offer a warm welcome to the English-speaking visitors present at
today’s Audience, especially those from England, Ireland, the
Philippines and the United States. My particular greeting goes to the
Sisters of the Society Devoted to the Sacred Heart. I also greet the
many student groups present. Upon all of you I invoke God’s blessings of
joy and peace!
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