Suggest an Edit — Meginhard

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Biography

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Meginhard was a Benedictine monk and historian of the ninth century associated with the imperial abbey of Fulda in East Francia. Fulda, founded in the eighth century by Saint Sturmi at the direction of Saint Boniface, had become one of the foremost centers of learning, liturgy, and historical writing in the Carolingian world. Meginhard belonged to the generation of Fulda scholars who followed Hrabanus Maurus and who worked under the East Frankish kings Louis the German and Charles the Fat.

He is best known as a student and literary heir of Rudolf of Fulda, who died in 865. Meginhard completed Rudolf's unfinished Translatio sancti Alexandri, a work commissioned by the Saxon magnate Waltbraht, grandson of Widukind. Rudolf had written the opening section on the origins, manners, and conversion of the Saxons; Meginhard added the account of how relics of the martyr pope Alexander were obtained in Rome and translated to the church Waltbraht founded at Wildeshausen in Saxony. Composed in the mid-860s, the Translatio is a significant source for Saxon history, the ideology of conversion, and Carolingian relic cults.

Meginhard also contributed to the Annales Fuldenses, the most important contemporary chronicle of East Frankish affairs. His participation in this annalistic tradition situates him among the monastic writers who documented both the internal life of their abbey and the political events of the later ninth century.

Almost nothing can be verified about Meginhard's birth, family, or precise career outside his writings. As a Benedictine monk he lived under the Rule of Saint Benedict and therefore in celibacy. Later biographical compilations conventionally give 888 as the year of his death, but the exact date and place remain unconfirmed by strictly contemporary evidence. He was neither bishop nor abbot, received no papal or patriarchal office, and was not the object of a saint's cult. His importance is literary and historical rather than hagiographical in the sense of personal sanctity.

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