“as it is certain that you will come to death” 129 If not from the pen, these critical verses on Rome could at least have come from the mouth of Saint Gall in 612 when he refused to obey his teacher Columban and escaped the onward journey of theperegrinatio pro Christo to Italy.1 Rather, an Irish monk in the Monastery of St Gall noted these lines in Old Irish towards the end of the 9th century as a warning to his fellow countrymen in the famous Codex Boernerianus.2 A pilgrimage to Rome, for all its popularity at the time, was always a risky undertaking. Although by no means all pilgrims to Rome met their death on the journey across the Alps or in the eternal city itself, we know of many drastic consequences in individual cases. The Irish Bishop Marcus and his nephew Moengal, for example, returned safely across the Alps in the middle of the 9th century to join the monastic community in St Gall. Others found their fortune in Italy itself and stayed for a few years, such as the Anglo-Saxon monk Willibald in Montecassino or Sturmi of Fulda in the monasteries of central Italy. Also in the 740s, Carloman, mayor of the palace, withdrew from the political scene and received clerical ordination from Pope Zacharias in Rome. His attempt to lead a life of leisure (otium) in the solitude of Monte Soratte apparently failed due to harassment by Frankish pilgrims and former followers.3 The intensity of pilgrimage to the south even made ‘state’ regulation necessary, finding its expression in the famous pass laws of the Lombard king Ratchis (744–749).4 His first addition to theLeges Langobardorumin 746 – clause 13 – reveals attempts in the border areas to control all movements of people via the system of clusae, “fortified border posts guarded by specializedclusarii under the authority of a city-basediudex”.5 How1 On Columbanus and his peregrinatio cf. Destefanis 2017. 2 Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, Mscr. Dresd. A.145.b, fol. 23r. For the original text cf. Erhart et al. 2012, p. 2. 3 For further information about these cited cases, cf. Erhart 2020. 4 Cf. the still most exhaustive analysis of clause 13 by Tangl 1958 and Pohl 2000. 5 Pohl 2000, p. 117. Introduction
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