… ceperunt peregrinari corporaliter et conversari spiritualiter, non tam de regione in regionem pedum passibus progredientes, quam de regione in regionem gradibus virtutum proficientes1…

1This line from the Vita Albarti archiepiscopi Casellensis, a 12^th-century hagiographical work written at an Irish Benedictine monastery in the Bavarian town of Regensburg, offers an idealized picture of the physical and spiritual journey undertaken by those amatores perfectionis who voluntarily left Ireland in the medieval period out of religious devotion. The promotion of the peregrinatio ideal was central to the communal identity of the so-called Schottenklöster in Germany and Austria, despite its potential incompatibility with the monastic precept of stabilitas loci. Moreover, the restriction of entry to Irishmen only and the fact that each of the Schottenklöster belonged to a distinct union of Irish monasteries within the Benedictine order, which at its peak in the early 13^th century stretched from Ireland to the Ukraine, led to a high degree of travel and personnel transfer being generated at an institutional level2. This article will offer some perspectives on the issue of mobility as it pertained to the medieval Schottenklöster. It will look at how the practicalities involved in sustaining the network of Irish monasteries on the Continent demanded mobility and also at the importance of the monastic journey itself to the identity of the Schottenklöster.

2The beginnings of the Schottenkloster movement lie in 1070s Regensburg, where a group of Irishmen was granted the use of the extramural church of Weih Sankt Peter in order to pursue a vita monachica, as described in the community’s earliest surviving charter from 10893. Around 1100 a second, larger monasterium scotorum was founded at Regensburg and dedicated to SS James and Gertrude. It was this latter monastery that would go on to serve as motherhouse to the various other Schottenklöster that began to be founded at towns across southern Germany and Austria from the 1130s onwards. In addition to the eight abbeys and two priories which belonged to the Regensburg-led union by the first half of the 13^th century came at least two subject priories in Ireland as well as a relatively short-lived and poorly documented outpost in Kiev4. Papal privileges granted in 1185 and 1215 recognised the status of the Schottenklöster as a separate group within the Benedictine order, which were linked by structures such as an annual general chapter and by the rights of visitation and correction vested in the Regensburg motherhouse5. This union of monasteries survived into the early 16^th century, despite frequent conflict between the constituent monasteries and the loss of a number of houses due to shortages in personnel or outside reform initiatives.

3As monastic communities open exclusively to Irishmen, the very existence of the Schottenklöster was predicated on each of the monks having undertaken the long journey from Ireland to Central Europe. It was not necessarily the case, however, that the individual monks had originally left Ireland with the specific purpose of entering one of the Schottenklöster. This is particularly true of the group of monks that belonged to the Irish community at Regensburg in its early decades. The primary narrative source for this early period is the Vita Mariani Scotti, the Life of the Irish monk, Muiredach Macc Robartaig, whom the text portrays as the founding father of the Schottenklöster6. It was written at some point between 1177 and 1185, around 100 years after the death of Marianus, but much of its detail can be corroborated by contemporary sources7. The actual account of Marianus’ life occupies an unusually short section of the text, quickly giving way to a historia fundationis, which details the emergence and fortunes of the Schottenklöster up to the time of writing8. The section of the text that reports on the life of the saint is also untypical of a work of hagiography, insofar as it tells us nothing of Marianus’ birth, upbringing or religious formation in Ireland, and instead describes only his peregrinatio, beginning suddenly with his arrival at Bamberg in Franconia with two companions. Whether the anonymous author was deliberately placing the peregrinatio centre stage within the biography or simply lacked information concerning Marianus’ early life in Ireland cannot be determined9. The former explanation seems more likely, considering that the primary causa scribendi cited by the author in the opening chapter was to explain and justify the Irish peregrinatio tradition10. Indeed, the fact that the text offers no account of Marianus’ death, the saint instead departing the scene once he had decided to end his travels and remain at Regensburg, again suggests that the restriction of focus to his peregrinatio was deliberate.

4According to the description of Marianus’ journey, he and two Irish companions, Candidus and Iohannes, stopped first at Bamberg, where they are said to have spent a year living a monastic life under the wing of the local bishop, before being encouraged to take the Benedictine habit and enter the monastery of St. Michael11. After an unspecified amount of time they left Bamberg to continue their pilgrimage to Rome, stopping next at Regensburg, where they appear to have lived as incluses at the female canonries of Ober- and Niedermünster, with Marianus said to have copied numerous religious texts for the canonesses, his fratres and the town’s poor clerics and widows12. The three Irishmen again began to contemplate resuming their pilgrimage to Rome, but divine guidance led them to settle at the church of St. Peter (Weih Sankt Peter) outside the walls of Regensburg, where a claustrum et claustri ędificia were soon erected for the Irish monks13. It is clear from this and other sources that Marianus and his early companions can be categorized as monachi peregrini, that is monks who exiled themselves permanently from their homeland out of religious devotion, if not for less idealistic reasons14. These were monks to whom the journey – nudum Christum nudi sequentes, as the author of the Vita Mariani puts it – was central to the pursuit of their monastic vocation15. In a colophon to a now-lost psalter copied by Marianus for the canonesses at Niedermünster, he himself describes the year 1074 as the 7^th of his peregrinatio16. In two surviving manuscripts, a set of Pauline epistles dating to 1079 and a compilation of monastic/ascetic texts dating to 1080, Marianus states that he copied the works for his fratres peregrini17. The earliest charter documenting the existence of the Irish monastic community at Weih Sankt Peter, an imperial privilege granted by Henry IV in 1089, uses extraordinary language to describe the monks, referring to them namely as

… certain Irishmen, who had exiled themselves from their homeland for the torment of the body and the salvation of the soul, and who, after spending a long time visiting places of prayer, had come finally to Regensburg18.

5This is a group of monks defined by their mobility, by the "monastic journey" they had undertaken. The same charter refers to the monks as monachi peregrini, while the head of the community describes himself as Benedictus Christi peregrinorum servus in a 1087 letter sent to King Vratislav II of Bohemia19. The 1089 charter makes no reference to the particular monastic observance of the community at Weih Sankt Peter, but the limited evidence allows the conclusion that the Rule of St. Benedict was being followed from the beginning20.

6The question then arises, as to whether the journeying of these monachi peregrini ended with their entry into a Benedictine convent. That the status of monachus peregrinus and the precept of stabilitas loci need not be incompatible, as long as the monastery in question was located outside the monk’s homeland, was pointed out by Arnold Angenendt in his seminal studies on the phenomenon21. In the case of at least some of the earliest Irish monks at Regensburg, nonetheless, becoming a member of a monastic community in a faraway town did not mark the end of their mobility. We have already seen that Marianus and his companions reportedly left a Benedictine monastery at Bamberg to continue their peregrinatio, albeit with the permission of the abbot of St. Michael’s. This clarification would have been important to the author of the Vita Mariani, he having asserted in the first chapter that he wished "to defend the monks of the Schottenklöster from those who would wish to ascribe them the stain of inconstancy" (nota inconstantię)22. Yet the Vita also informs us that one of Marianus’ initial companions, Iohannes, actually went on to also leave the newly founded Irish monastery at Weih Sankt Peter and ended up as an incluse at the Augustinian canonry of Göttweig in Lower Austria23. Another of the earliest Irish monks at Weih Sankt Peter, Clemens, described as ardentissimus Christi ac peregrinationis amator, also left the monastery, travelling to Jerusalem, where he died24. It seems that in the formative period of the Irish monastic community at Regensburg the monks’ pursuit of the peregrinatio pro Christo ideal was not necessarily compatible with the type of stabilitas envisaged by the Rule of St. Benedict. It may even have been that this tension gave rise to disagreement within the community at Weih Sankt Peter, as might be inferred from the use of the phrase cunctis renitentibus ("in the face of general resistance") in relation to the departure of Clemens.

7I will return shortly to the Irish monks’ understanding of the concept of peregrinatio, but first look more closely at the issue of mobility in the context of the practicalities involved in sustaining up to ten Irish monasteries in Central Europe. With the foundation of the Abbey of SS James and Gertrude at Regensburg early in the 12^th century and especially with the establishment of multiple daughter-houses from the 1130s onwards, new mechanisms needed to be put in place to source the recruits required to occupy the individual houses. This was achieved primarily through the foundation of subject priories in Ireland, which functioned as recruitment centres for the monasteries on the Continent. In keeping with the very poor survival rate of sources relating to medieval Irish monasteries, the Schottenkloster priories in Ireland are only sparsely documented25. There were at least two such houses, one certainly at Rosscarbery on Ireland’s south coast, another most probably at Cashel, which also lay in the southern kingdom of Munster26. Both of the priories appear to have been founded by the middle of the 12^th century. Although little can be garnered from the extant sources regarding the day-to-day operation of these priories, a papal privilege dating to 1248 does give some indication as to the manner in which the transfer of novices from Ireland to the Continent occurred27. In it Pope Innocent IV grants the Regensburg abbot the right to delegate his responsibility to receive the professions of novices to the priors of the Irish houses, as the "distance and dangers of the roads" prevented the novices from travelling between Ireland and Regensburg for this purpose28. This change to the previous practice of the novices making their vows at the Regensburg motherhouse may have been designed to bolster the commitment of the new recruits before they left for the Continent, in the hope that they would be less likely to stray from the path on the long journey. A second privilege granted by Innocent IV to the Regensburg abbot in 1248 supports this theory. It complains of numerous superiors and monks of the Irish priories roaming about in the manner of gyrovagi and fleeing disciplinary proceedings, much to the detriment of their own souls and the reputation of their order29. It therefore grants the abbot the right to visit, correct and reform the houses, and to recall the fugitivi to their proper location.

8The Irish connections of the Schottenkloster movement occasioned frequent travel between the Continent and Ireland not only as part of the recruitment process but also for fund-raising purposes, as is demonstrated by accounts in 12^th-13^th century sources of delegations travelling from Regensburg to royal centres in Ireland30. The large number of high-ranking royal and ecclesiastical patrons from Ireland listed in the communal necrology of the Schottenklöster testifies to the high level of contact with their homeland, as does the mass of Irish hagiographical material collected at the Regensburg Schottenkloster31. There is little information in the sources regarding the route followed by the Irish monks on their journeys to and from Ireland. One episode in a thirteenth-century foundation history written at the Regensburg monastery, the Libellus de fundacione ecclesie Consecrati Petri, does recount the return journey of one fund-raising party, which took them through Wales, England, Flanders, Laon, Aachen, Cologne, Mainz, Frankfurt and Würzburg32. If one excludes the stops at Aachen and Cologne, which are likely attributable to the overriding, fantastical narrative of the Libellus, which sought to credit Charlemagne with the foundation of Irish monasteries at Burtscheid outside Aachen and at Cologne in addition to that at Weih Sankt Peter, the route may reflect that which was customarily taken at the time of the Libellus’ writing33. The return journey of the twelfth-century Regensburg abbot Gregorius described in the same work again takes him through Wales, England and Flanders34. The fund-raising journeys of Irish monks lead not only to Ireland ; the Vita Mariani includes an account of a journey undertaken by a monk named Mauritius to Kiev, where he received 100 Marks' worth of pelts from the rex Ruscie and the principes of the town35. According to the internal chronology of the Vita, this trip was undertaken around the time of the foundation of the Abbey of SS James and Gertrude in Regensburg, an event datable to circa 1100. This is the not the first record we have of an Irish monk on his travels in Eastern Europe. A second letter sent by the Irish community in Regensburg to King Vratislav II of Bohemia in 1090/1091 sought safe passage to Poland and back for an unnamed envoy36. It is possible that the nuntius in question was actually Mauritius37. The eastern connections of the Schottenklöster would culminate in the foundation of an Irish monastery at Kiev, the geographical spread of the Schottenkloster network stretching for a time to over 2700 km from west to east38. According to a 1242 charter preserved in Matthew of Paris’ Chronica Majora, the recent Mongol invasion, which seems to have marked the demise of the Schottenkloster at Kiev, had resulted in at least two Irish monks returning the full distance to their homeland via the Irish monastery in Vienna, where they appear to have been members of the community before being sent to Kiev39.

9The fact that each of the Schottenklöster belonged to this widespread network of monasteries that was united under the regimen of the Regensburg motherhouse, had, as has already been seen, considerable impact on the stabilitas loci of the Irish monks. The transfer of personnel within the union began with the establishment of daughter-houses in the 12^th and 13^th centuries, which led to groups of monks being sent from the Regensburg motherhouse to people the new foundations40. Although poorly documented, it can also be assumed that there was a good degree of movement between the different houses in subsequent centuries, particularly as the overall number of monks declined and the smaller monasteries had to be bolstered or closed41. A visitation protocol from 1319 offers a rare glimpse of the high level of mobility within the Regensburg-led union. In it Johannes, the then abbot of the Regensburg motherhouse, states that there were only four monks in his convent at the time, but that six others were absent for various reasons:

I asked him how many monks were missing from the monastery. He replied that six (were), two had been sent to Ireland for boys (pro pueris), two had been sent to Vienna on account of misdemeanours, which they had committed at night outside the monastery, one in Eichstätt administering the monastery there, a sixth, indeed, gone wandering about (vagabundus)42.

10It seems clear from the historical record that there were different levels of community within the Schottenkloster movement. There were the individual convents, but there was also a "super-community" encompassing the brethren of all of the Schottenklöster43. This community would have been engendered and sustained by the travel of monks between the different houses as well as by the structures of general chapters and visitations that formed the framework of the Regensburg-led union. Conducive to this sense of community would also have been the shared commemoration of deceased brethren, as is documented in a necrology compiled at Regensburg from the mid-12^th-century onwards, where the names of monks from all of the different Schottenklöster are recorded together44. As the Schottenkloster movement expanded, it is this sense of a super-community that is likely to have informed the monasteries’ approach to the issue of stabilitas, as laid out in the Rule of St. Benedict. As has long been noted, the Rule does not expressly prescribe stabiltas loci45. As set out in chapter 58, the vow taken by every new monk included instead the promise of simple stabilitas, while chapter 4 demands stabilitas in congregatione, so stability of community rather than of place46. Although the sources relating to the Schottenklöster contain no express guidelines or reflections upon the issue of stabilitas, it seems likely that they interpreted the stabilitas in congregatione rule in similar manner to the Cluniacs, where the relevant congregatio or community encompassed the brethren of all communities affiliated to the motherhouse rather than that contained within a single physical monastery47. Those novices making their profession, whether at a Schottenkloster priory in Ireland, at the Regensburg motherhouse or at one of the daughter-houses would, in effect, have been committing themselves to this larger community, rather than to any individual house48. The requisite conceptual distinction between community and place is already in evidence in the Vita Mariani, where the author describes how the two Irish monasteries at Regensburg constituted unus conventus utriusque loci in unitate pacis et obedientie, although the limited level of de iure and de facto independence from the motherhouse enjoyed by Weih Sankt Peter priory would not be comparable with that experienced by the abbeys within the Schottenkloster union49.

11Finally, I will return briefly to the issue of the monachi peregrini. Outside of the early period at Regensburg there are no records of Irish monks leaving a Schottenkloster to continue their peregrinatio. It would appear that the stabilitas in congregatione precept of the Rule was respected, and those who fell foul of it were now to be classed as gyrovagi or, as expressed in the 1319 visitation report, vagabundi. Yet the idea of the monachus peregrinus remained central to the self-image of the Irish Benedictine monks50. The principal 12^th- and 13^th-century narrative texts written at Regensburg extoll the virtue of the peregrinatio and portray the monks of the Schottenklöster as the successors of the illustrious Irish sancti peregrini of the early medieval period, for example, Columbanus, Fursa, Gallus and Kilian. The author of the Vita Mariani prefaces the Life, which begins with an account of the activities of Irish saints and missionaries in Britain and on the Continent, with the line:

I will commend to you… why our predecessors and we also, the poor of Christ, following from a western land naked the naked Christ for the salvation of our souls, leaving behind our homeland and our dear relatives out of love and desire for a heavenly life51.

12He thus firmly locates the twelfth century monks of the Schottenklöster within the long-standing peregrinatio tradition. The Vita Mariani and, even more, the mid-13^th-century Libellus de fundacione ecclesie Consecrati Petri argued that Irishmen and the concept of the peregrinatio pro Christo were inextricably linked. The author of the latter, for example, asserted with regard to the early Irish peregrini: Et duxerunt in consuetudinem omnes Scoti ab illo die invisere loca sancta Christi et peregrinari52. A further text, the above-mentioned Vita Albarti archiepiscopi Casellensis, written at the Regensburg Schottenkloster at some point in the 12^th-century, constitutes a veritable ode to the peregrinatio and invents the figure of Albartus, an ancient Archbishop of Cashel, who is said to have left his see to visit loca sancta before arriving at Regensburg, where he would end his days53. The Life thus provided a convenient saintly predecessor for the 12^th century monks of the Schottenkloster.

13By exploiting the legacy of real or imagined Irish saints, the monks of the Schottenklöster cultivated an image of themselves as monachi peregrini. Lacking a missionary purpose or a new form of monastic observance, this approach can be seen as a means of justifying the very existence of their Irish monastic colonies and carving out a niche for themselves within the crowded monastic landscape. Indeed, the potential of this strategy to yield dividends is evident in relation to the establishment of the daughter-house at Würzburg c. 1138, where in the earliest surviving charter the founder, Bishop Embricho, refers to the monks as "peregrini scoti, compatriots namely of our patron, the precious martyr Kilian"54. The promotion of the peregrinatio ideal, together with Irish exclusivity, the wide geographical spread of the monasteries and the generous interpretation of the stabilitas in congregatione precept meant journeying and the concept of the journey were fundamental to the functioning and identity of the medieval Schottenklöster.