Candidus of Fulda

Candidus Bruun of Fulda was a Benedictine scholar of the ninth-century Carolingian Renaissance of letters.

He received his first instruction from the learned Eigil, Abbot of Fulda, 818-822. Abbot Ratgar (802-817) sent the gifted scholar to Einhard at the court of Charlemagne, where he most probably learned the art he employed later in decorating with pictures the western apse of St. Salvator, the so-called Ratgerbasilica, to which, in 819, the remains of St. Boniface were transferred. When Rabanus Maurus was made abbot (822), Candidus (who describes himself as a magister or teacher) may have succeeded him as head of the monastic school of Fulda. In any case as one of the most distinguished scholars of his monastery and as a renowned artist, he was among the leaders of the community of Fulda. In his later life he was adopted as an administrator of one of the so-called ministeria, administration units of the landed property outside of Fulda. Yet this honorable function gave him reason to complain of the lack of intellectual conversation in his loneliness far from the monastic community of Fulda.

In the crisis caused by the austerity and severity of Abbot Ratgar, he seems to have tried to mediate between the struggling parties, but without lasting success. Finally in 817, Ratgar was deposed by the Emperor Louis the Pious. After one year under two missi of the emperor who introduced the Anianian reform, the monastery was allowed to elect a new abbot. Eigil, the leader of the opposition against Ratger, was elected as his successor. Eigil's life is the subject of the only surviving work of Candidus. (His life of Baugulf, abbot of Fulda 779-802, has been lost.)

During his later years Candidus saw the increasing conflicts between Louis the Pious and his sons and, after their father’s death, between the sons themselves. This difficult political situation inevitably resulted in a new crisis for Fulda, because abbot Rabanus Maurus, who was a follower of Louis the Pious and after his death of the eldest son Emperor Lothar I, was forced to resign by King Louis the German after the former’s defeat in the battle of Fontenoy (25. June 841). The abbey's fragile peace was threatened by a new conflict between followers of the warring kings as well as a struggle between candidates for the abbacy. Bruun Candidus seems to have had ambitions to succeed Rabanus Maurus. In his Vita Aegili abbatis Fuldensis, he implicitly promotes his candidacy by showing his expertise in all questions of monastic life. It was not Candidus, however, but Rabanus' close friend Hatto who was elected abbot in 842. Candidus died in 845.

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