Adémar de Chabannes
Encyclopedia
Adémar de Chabannes (c. 988-1034) was an eleventh-century French monk
, a historian who wrote the first annals
to have been compiled in Aquitaine
since Late Antiquity
, a musical composer
and a successful literary forger
.
département of France. Educated at the monastery
of Saint-Martial at Limoges
, he passed his life as a monk, either at this place or at the monastery of Saint-Cybard at Angoulême
.
s, and his principal work is a history entitled Chronicon Aquitanicum et Francicum or Historia Francorum. This is in three books and deals with Frankish
history from the fabulous reign of Pharamond
, king of the Franks
, to AD 1028. The two earlier books are scarcely more than a copy of earlier histories of Frankish kings, such as the Liber Historiae Francorum
, the Continuation of Fredegar and the Annales regni Francorum, but the third book, which deals with the period from 814 to 1028, is of considerable historical importance. This is published in the Monumenta Germaniae historica
Scriptores. Vol. iv (Hanover and Berlin, 1826–1892).
He also wrote Commemoratio abbatum Lemovicensium basilicae S. Martialis apostoli (848-1029) and Epistola ad Jordanum Lemovicensem episcopum et alios de apostolatu S. Martialis, both of which are published by Migne
in the Patrologia Latina
, tome cxli (Paris, 1844–1855).
, the third century bishop
who Christianized the Limoges
district, had actually lived centuries earlier, and was in fact one of the original apostles. And he supplemented the less than scanty documentation for the alleged 'apostolicity' of Martial, first with a forged Life of Martial, as if composed by Martial's successor, Bishop Aurelian
. To effect this claim, he composed an "Apostolic Mass" that still exists in Adémar's own hand (Paris Bibliothèque Nationale MS Latin 909), making it the earliest autograph Western musical composition that has survived. The local bishop
and abbot
seem to have cooperated in the project and the mass
was first sung on Sunday, August 3, 1029.
Unfortunately for Adémar, the liturgy
was disrupted by a travelling monk, Benedict of Chiusa
, who denounced the improved Vita of Martial, as a provincial forgery and the new liturgy as offensive to God. The word spread, and the promising young monk was disgraced. Adémar's reaction was to build forgery upon forgery, inventing a Council of 1031 that confirmed the 'apostolic' status of Martial, even a forged papal letter. The reality of this pathological tissue of forgeries was only unravelled in the 1920s, by a historian, Louis Saltet
. Mainstream Catholic historians ignored Saltet's revelations until the 1990s.
In the long run, Adémar was successful. By the late 11th century, Martial was indeed venerated in Aquitaine as an apostle, though his legend was doubted elsewhere. In a very direct way, Adémar's Mass shows the power of liturgy to effect worship.
" music for St. Martial, as well as texts and music for Apostolic feasts, but he also added some of his own compositions, especially in the tropes
(extended musical items added to existing liturgical texts). The composition has been recorded by the New York Ensemble for Early Music.
Adémar died around 1034, most probably at Jerusalem, where he had gone on a pilgrimage
.
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
, a historian who wrote the first annals
Annals
Annals are a concise form of historical representation which record events chronologically, year by year. The Oxford English Dictionary defines annals as "a narrative of events written year by year"...
to have been compiled in Aquitaine
Aquitaine
Aquitaine , archaic Guyenne/Guienne , is one of the 27 regions of France, in the south-western part of metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It comprises the 5 departments of Dordogne, :Lot et Garonne, :Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Landes...
since Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
, a musical composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and a successful literary forger
Forgery
Forgery is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents with the intent to deceive. Copies, studio replicas, and reproductions are not considered forgeries, though they may later become forgeries through knowing and willful misrepresentations. Forging money or...
.
Life
Adémar was born at Chabannes, a village in today's Haute-VienneHaute-Vienne
Haute-Vienne is a French department named after the Vienne River. It is one of three departments that together constitute the French region of Limousin.The chief and largest city is Limoges...
département of France. Educated at the monastery
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
of Saint-Martial at Limoges
Limoges
Limoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....
, he passed his life as a monk, either at this place or at the monastery of Saint-Cybard at Angoulême
Angoulême
-Main sights:In place of its ancient fortifications, Angoulême is encircled by boulevards above the old city walls, known as the Remparts, from which fine views may be obtained in all directions. Within the town the streets are often narrow. Apart from the cathedral and the hôtel de ville, the...
.
Writings
Adémar's life was mainly spent in writing and transcribing chronicleChronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
s, and his principal work is a history entitled Chronicon Aquitanicum et Francicum or Historia Francorum. This is in three books and deals with Frankish
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
history from the fabulous reign of Pharamond
Pharamond
Pharamond or Faramund is a legendary early king of the Franks, first referred to in the anonymous 8th century Carolingian text Liber Historiae Francorum, also known as the Gesta regnum Francorum. In this work, which is customarily dated to 727, the anonymous author begins by writing of a mythical...
, king of the Franks
Franks
The Franks were a confederation of Germanic tribes first attested in the third century AD as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul. Only the Salian Franks formed a...
, to AD 1028. The two earlier books are scarcely more than a copy of earlier histories of Frankish kings, such as the Liber Historiae Francorum
Liber Historiae Francorum
Liber historiae Francorum is a book that briefly starts as secondary source for early Franks in the time of Marcomer, and it gives a short breviarum of events until the time of the late Merovingians, where it becomes an important primary source of the contemporaneous history...
, the Continuation of Fredegar and the Annales regni Francorum, but the third book, which deals with the period from 814 to 1028, is of considerable historical importance. This is published in the Monumenta Germaniae historica
Monumenta Germaniae Historica
The Monumenta Germaniae Historica is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published sources for the study of German history from the end of the Roman Empire to 1500.The society sponsoring the series was established by the Prussian reformer Heinrich Friedrich Karl Freiherr vom...
Scriptores. Vol. iv (Hanover and Berlin, 1826–1892).
He also wrote Commemoratio abbatum Lemovicensium basilicae S. Martialis apostoli (848-1029) and Epistola ad Jordanum Lemovicensem episcopum et alios de apostolatu S. Martialis, both of which are published by Migne
Jacques Paul Migne
Jacques Paul Migne was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely-distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a universal library for the Catholic priesthood.He was born at Saint-Flour, Cantal and studied...
in the Patrologia Latina
Patrologia Latina
The Patrologia Latina is an enormous collection of the writings of the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1844 and 1855, with indices published between 1862 and 1865....
, tome cxli (Paris, 1844–1855).
Forgery
He embraced the developing tale that Saint MartialSaint Martial
Saint Martial was the first bishop of Limoges in today's France, according to a lost vita of Saturnin, first bishop of Toulouse, which Gregory of Tours quotes in his History of the Franks.-Life:...
, the third century bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
who Christianized the Limoges
Limoges
Limoges |Limousin]] dialect of Occitan) is a city and commune, the capital of the Haute-Vienne department and the administrative capital of the Limousin région in west-central France....
district, had actually lived centuries earlier, and was in fact one of the original apostles. And he supplemented the less than scanty documentation for the alleged 'apostolicity' of Martial, first with a forged Life of Martial, as if composed by Martial's successor, Bishop Aurelian
Aurelian of Limoges
Saint Aurelian of Limoges is venerated as a Christian saint. Christian tradition makes him the second bishop of Limoges, and the successor of St. Martial....
. To effect this claim, he composed an "Apostolic Mass" that still exists in Adémar's own hand (Paris Bibliothèque Nationale MS Latin 909), making it the earliest autograph Western musical composition that has survived. The local bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
and abbot
Abbot
The word abbot, meaning father, is a title given to the head of a monastery in various traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not actually the head of a monastery...
seem to have cooperated in the project and the mass
Mass
Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...
was first sung on Sunday, August 3, 1029.
Unfortunately for Adémar, the liturgy
Liturgy
Liturgy is either the customary public worship done by a specific religious group, according to its particular traditions or a more precise term that distinguishes between those religious groups who believe their ritual requires the "people" to do the "work" of responding to the priest, and those...
was disrupted by a travelling monk, Benedict of Chiusa
Benedict of Chiusa
Benedict of Chiusa was a travelling Lombard scholar-monk of the 11th century. He is known chiefly from his memorable appearance in the Historia Francorum of Adémar de Chabannes....
, who denounced the improved Vita of Martial, as a provincial forgery and the new liturgy as offensive to God. The word spread, and the promising young monk was disgraced. Adémar's reaction was to build forgery upon forgery, inventing a Council of 1031 that confirmed the 'apostolic' status of Martial, even a forged papal letter. The reality of this pathological tissue of forgeries was only unravelled in the 1920s, by a historian, Louis Saltet
Louis Saltet
Louis Saltet was a French Benedictine ecclesiastical historian. He taught at Toulouse, and published a long series of articles in the Bulletin de Littérature ecclésiastique de l'Institut Catholique de Toulouse....
. Mainstream Catholic historians ignored Saltet's revelations until the 1990s.
In the long run, Adémar was successful. By the late 11th century, Martial was indeed venerated in Aquitaine as an apostle, though his legend was doubted elsewhere. In a very direct way, Adémar's Mass shows the power of liturgy to effect worship.
Works and legacy
Adémar composed his musical Mass and office largely from the standard "GregorianGregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
" music for St. Martial, as well as texts and music for Apostolic feasts, but he also added some of his own compositions, especially in the tropes
Trope (music)
A trope or tropus may be a variety of different things in medieval and modern music.The term trope derives from the Greek τρόπος , "a turn, a change" , related to the root of the verb τρέπειν , "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change"...
(extended musical items added to existing liturgical texts). The composition has been recorded by the New York Ensemble for Early Music.
Adémar died around 1034, most probably at Jerusalem, where he had gone on a pilgrimage
Pilgrimage
A pilgrimage is a journey or search of great moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith...
.
Primary sources
- Chronicon Aquitanicum et Francicum or Historia Francorum, ed. Jules Chavanon. Chronicon. Collection des textes pour servir à l'étude et à l'enseignement de l'histoire 20. Paris, 1897.
- Sermons, ed. and tr. Edmond Pognon, L’an mille. Oeuvres de Liutprand, Raoul Glaber, Adémar de Chabannes, Adalberon [et] Helgaud. Mémoires du passé pour servir au temps présent 6. Paris, 1947.