Fulbert of Chartres

 

Bishop of Chartres (* 970 - † 10. 4. 1028)

 

Fulbert of Chartres must have been born about the middle of the tenth century, most likely in Italy, perhaps in Rome. He came from an unidentified and unfaithful family:

 

Sed recolens, quod non opibus neque sanguine fretus

Conscendi cathedram, pauper, de sorde levatus,

 

He writes of himself. In the youthful clerics of an Italian bishop, he later came to Rome, where perhaps he was already a pupil of Gerbert, whom he could then have followed to Reims. In any case, we meet him as a pupil of Gerbert, as a classmate and friend of Roberts the Pious, between the years 984 and 987 in the Franconian town of Coronation. Perhaps in 987, at any rate in 992, he came to Chartres, received here a lecture, a canon, and, finally, the chancellor's office, which he had already documented. In 1006 he was appointed bishops by the favor of Roberts and consecrated by Leothéric, Archbishop of Sens, his former fellow-pupil, he did not renounce as a bishop to the doctrine, but he also developed an active activity, as he did in the ecclesiastical Well as in the political life of the nation.

 

On September 7, 1020, Fire destroyed the Cathedral of Chartres; Fulbert rebuilt them anew. The year 1022 is marked by a bishop's visit to Rome; In 1028, on the 10th of April, after having occupied the episcopal seat for twenty-one years and six months, he deviated one of the most celebrated names of his century, even of the entire Middle Ages, to posterity. See Pfister, De Fulberti Carnotensis vita et operibus, Paris, 1895; Clerval, Les écoles de Chartres au moyen âge (Mémoires de la societé archéologique d'Eure et Loire, Tome XL.), Chartres 1895, p. 31-40.

 

With regard to Fulbert's anthems, we are generally dependent on the editio princeps of his works. Nor did the in-depth investigations of Clerval reveal new paths. The first edition of Fulbert's was arranged by Charles de Villiers: "D. Fulberti, Carnotensis episcopi antiquissimi, opera omnia. Parisiis MDCVIII. "Villiers was able to draw from three manuscripts: the one still at the Collège de Navarre is still there; It is today's Parisinus 14167. The Hs. Contains no hymns. The other two Hess, Denys Petau, and Nicolas Lefèvre, are missing. Anal. Hymn. L, 280-289, I have compiled from the edition de Villiers, those pieces which can be designated as belonging to the hymns literature. Where I had handwriting, I have compared it; Where not, I had to follow de Villiers.

 

Not unimportant is the Parisian HS. 2872, from the Pfister some still unedited poems of Fulbert could communicate. It consists of three parts: the first (folks 1 - 24), saec. 12., contains only letters; The second (folks 25-28), saec. 11 in., Contains almost only poems, including unfortunately only two hymns; The third (folks 29 - 130). An apographum of the beginning seventeenth century, contains letters, sermons, and poems. A number of pieces, the de Villiers as "hymns" or as "Prosen" designated, I have Anal. Hymn Lc, for the good reason that they are neither the one nor the other. For example, he calls the hymn Chorus novae Jerusalem , fol. 184, a "Responsorium". On another liturgical opusculum of Fulbert, of which we are informed by William of Malmesbury, cf. Anal. Hymn Lc 281.

 

An Oxterian man, Cod. Junius 121. 1 in a note written in the thirteenth century, which lists the authors of various sequences, the Prose Exsultemus in hac the festiva (Anal VIII, 220). It is said, in the last place, in the following passage: " Fulbertus , episcopus Carnutensis: Exsultemus in hac the festiva ." The note, as far as it is controllable, contains almost the same truths and falsities. To which side this statement to be beaten remains uncertain.

 

Finally, we must point to the partly false and, in some cases, most questionable prose, which are attributed to Fulbert at Compostella in the so-called Cocex Calixtinus. See the source, Anal. XVII, 5-16; The texts, p. 191, 200-207.

 

Guido Maria Dreves,, Clemens Blume, Ein Jahrtausend Lateinischer Hymnendichtung