by diffi culties of language: no clearer statement of the
central issue was to be possible until the introduction
of Aristotelian notions of substance and accident in the
13th century.
Lanfranc’s leadership of the school at Bec made it into
one of the most famous of its day, and pupils included
Anselm of Bec, Ivo of Chartres, and Guitmund of Aversa
(later Pope Alexander II). He was a valued counselor
to Duke William of Normandy (the Conqueror) despite
having declared William’s marriage invalid.
Lanfranc was a great holder of synods (in 1075,
1076, 1078, 1081), which he used to promulgate canon
law, and he was the fi rst to create separate courts of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction. His legal turn of mind (he
seems to have practiced or at least studied civil law in
Pavia) was coupled with a traditionalist viewpoint, so
that his outlook reminds us of Carolingian attitudes
and practices rather than any innovation. The collec-
tion of canon law, the so-called Collectio Lanfranci,
which Lanfranc brought to Canterbury from Bec, has
an old-fashioned cast, in contrast to the Collection in
Seventy-Four Titles (Diversorum patrum sententiae) or
Ivo of Chartres’s Panormia and other legal works, the
new breed of legal collections that it seems Lanfranc
preferred to ignore.
As archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc replaced
many Saxon bishops with Normans, to the displeasure
of some in the English church, but in doing so he in-
creased ties with the Continent and with Gregory VII’s
reforms, with which, at least in the area of the moral
reform of the church, he was largely in sympathy. Lan-
franc rebuilt the church at Canterbury and established
its library. He reestablished many of the old monastic
privileges and lands.
See also Anselm of Bec; Gregory VII, Pope;
William I
Further Reading
Lanfranc of Bec. Opera. PL 150. 1–782.
——. The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed.
Helen Clover and Margaret T. Gibson. Oxford: Clarendon,
1979.
Gibson, Margaret T. Lanfranc of Bec. Oxford: Clarendon,
1978.
Huygens, R.B.C. “Bérenger de Tours, Lanfranc et Bernold de
Constance.” Sacris Euridiri 16 (1965): 355–403.
Southern, Richard W., ed. Essays in Medieval History. London:
Macmillan, 1948.
Lesley J. Smith
LANGMANN, ADELHEID
(ca. 1312–1375)
Born to a politically and socially powerful family in
Nuremberg around 1312, at the age of thirteen, Adel-
heid Langmann was betrothed to Gottfried Teufel, who
died shortly afterward. Following what she describes
as a lengthy spiritual struggle, around 1330, Adelheid
entered the Franconian Dominican cloister of Engelthal.
Regarded as a particularly prosperous and renowned
cloister, Engelthal housed the daughters of many of the
prominent burghers of the area. Among them was Chris-
tina Ebner, whose widespread praise included bishops
and kings. Adelheid was cloistered at Engelthal in 1350
when King Charles IV (later Emperor Charles) visited
the monastery for spiritual advice. She was educated
in Latin and learned to read and write in her vernacu-
lar German dialect. Shortly after Christina wrote her
spiritual autobiography, Adelheid recorded her visions
and revelations along with a lengthy prayer dedicated
to the Trinity. Her Revelations, extant in three manu-
script variations, were written in a Bavarian dialect and
chronicle her spiritual life from 1330 to 1344. While the
content is essentially autohagiographical, representing
the religious experiences of its author, there are stylistic
similarities and thematic parallels with the mystical
lives narrated in the convent chronicles of Helfta, Toss,
Unterlinden, Diessenhoven, and Adlehausen. Infl uenced
by biblical sources, especially the Song of Songs, Adel-
heid’s ecstatic mystricism refl ects the bride mysticism
of the Middle Ages. Her texts, as well as several other
manuscripts written by Dominican cloistered women
in Southern Germany, were rediscovered and edited by
nineteenth-century scholars interested in the linguistic
history of German.
See also Charles IV; Ebner, MargarethaFurther Reading
Die Offenbarungen der Adelheid Langmann: Klosterfrau zu
Englethal, ed. Phillip Strauch. Strasbourg: Trübner, 1878.
Hale, Rosemary Drage. “Imitatio Mariae: Motherhood Motifs
in Devotional Memoirs.” Mystics Quarterly 16 (1990):
193–214.
Hindsley, Leonard P. The Mystics of Engelthal: Writings from a
Medieval Monastery. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.
Rosemary Drage HaleLAUFENBERG, HEINRICH
(ca. 1390–1460)
Laufenberg, a cleric active in Freiburg im Breisgau and
Zofi ngen, composed the bulk of his verses between
1413 and 1445. In the latter year he entered a cloister
in Strasbourg that had been founded by Rulman Mer-
swin (d. 1382), the lay mystic and guiding spirit for the
so-called Friends of God. Laufenberg is best known
as the author of some 120 sacred songs written in the
German vernacular, among them Christmas and New
Year’s verses. His Christmas song Jn einem krippfl yLAUFENBERG, HEINRICH