Historical Fact and Exegetical Fiction in the Carolingian Vita S. Sualonis
Lynda L. Coon
The nineteenth-century editor of Ermenrich Ellwangen's (ca. 814–74) Vita Sualonis , Oswald Holder-Egger, dismissed the Carolingian hagiographer's sermon on Anglo-Saxon hermit Sualo as historically unimportant because its heavy reliance oral traditions, turgid prose style, and clumsy Latin grammar. Holder-Egger found fault with “ahistoricism” Ermenrich's —a scholarly stance no doubt influenced by historicism his day that privileged “the basic story primary object or goal research.” For late-nineteenth century, recovery reconstruction an original source (an archetype Urtext) from which all other derivative secondary versions sprang was ultimate task historical inquiry. Such Urtext, once unearthed, would then present true, uncontaminated what had happened in past, historian who successfully excavated Urtype assume role truth teller.
Church History