Often criticized for inaccuracy, gossip, disorganization, and prodigy mongering by
modern political historians, Raoul has proven a rich source for social history and
mentalities; his theology of history, though crude, prefigures such 12th-century historians
as Hugh of Saint-Victor, Otto of Freising, and Joachim of Fiore. Raoul is best known for
his apocalyptic interpretation of the two millennial dates 1000 (Incarnation) and 1033
(Passion), which he linked to mass manifestations of religious fervor—heresy, church
building, pilgrimage (especially to Jerusalem), and the Peace of God movement. He has
accordingly suffered from polemical treatment at the hands of modern historians opposed
to the romantic notion of the “terrors of the year 1000.”
Richard Landes
[See also: ADÉMAR DE CHABANNES; HISTORIOGRAPHY; HUGH OF SAINT-
VICTOR; MILLENNIALISM]
Raoul Glaber. Les cinq livres de ses histoires (900–1044), ed. Maurice Prou. Paris: Picard, 1886.
——. Rodulfus Glaber opera, ed. John France, Neithard Bulst, and Paul Reynolds. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1989.
——. Rodolfo il Glabro: Cronche dell’anno mille (storie), ed. Guglielmo Cavallo and Giovanni
Orlandi. Milan, 1989.
France, J. “Rodulfus Glaber and the Cluniacs.” Journal of Eccle-siastical History 39 (1988):497–
507.
Iogna-Prat, D., and R.Ortigues. “Raoul Glaber et l’historiographie clunisienne.” Studi medievali 3rd
ser. 26 (1985):437–72.
RATRAMNUS OF CORBIE
(d. ca. 875). Born in the early 9th century, Ratramnus became a monk at the abbey of
Corbie, where he died. One of the most original thinkers of medieval France, he was a
friend of Paschasius Radbertus, Gottschalk, and Lupus of Ferrières. A spirited author, he
directly confronted Paschasius Radbertus on the eucharist and the virginity of Mary in
partu (i.e., during and after Jesus’s birth) and Hincmar of Reims on predestination, the
nature of the soul, and (in a lost work) the Trinity. Ra-tramnus warned against “gross
corporeality” in eucharistic thought, maintaining the continued reality of the bread and
wine, while also asserting the real presence of Christ in the sacrament. His eucharistic
treatise was championed by Berengar of Tours and the Protestant Reformers. He was a
favorite of Charles the Bald, and he wrote the Contra Graecorum for Pope Nicholas I, in
defense of papal primacy, clerical celibacy, and the use of the filioque (the procession of
the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son) in the Creed. Ratramnus ridiculed
superstition in his treatise on the virginity of Mary and in his Epistola de cynocephalis,
concerning the “dog-man” mentioned by Augustine in City of God (De civitate Dei 16.8).
E.Ann Matter
[See also: BERENGAR OF TOURS; CORBIE; GOTTSCHALK; HINCMAR OF
REIMS; PASCHASIUS RADBERTUS]
Ratramnus of Corbie. Opera omnia. PL 121.
——. De corpore et sanguine Domini: Texte original et notice bibliographique, ed. Jan
N.Bakhuizen Van Den Brink. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1974.
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