Resumen de Fragments of the lost "Vita Sancti Erluini" (BHL 2603) by Richarius of Gembloux in Brussels, Royal Library, MS 5345
In his Gesta abbatum Gemblacensium, written between 1072 and 1092, Sigebert of Gembloux († 1112) mentions and quotes from a poem, a metrical Vita of the Gembloux abbot Erluin, written by an earlier monk of the abbey named Richarius. Sigebert laments that he could find no complete manuscript of the poem, but only a few scattered and cut up fragments. According to Sigebert, Richarius dedicated the poem to bishop Notger of Liège, so it must have been written between the death of Erluin in 987 and the death of Notger in 1008. This makes it the earliest literary product of the abbey at Gembloux. The Vita Sancti Erluini (BHL 2603) is known today only from the lines of it quoted or paraphrased by Sigebert. It is otherwise described in all modern scholarship as lost. Recent investigation of the Gembloux manuscripts in the Royal Library in Brussels led to the discovery of four small fragments of Richarius’ work, perhaps the same scraps that Sigebert himself had found and quoted from. The fragments have portions of Richarius’ poem on one side and portions of an otherwise unknown prose text on the other. It is argued here that the prose text comes from a prose prologue (or prefatory letter) that preceded Richarius’ poem. Both sides of the fragments are edited in their entirety.
