Grimald of Weissenburg


Grimald von Weißenburg, Latinised Grimaldus, was abbot of Weissenburg Abbey, abbot of the Abbey of Saint Gall, arch-chaplain of the East Frankish king Louis the German and chancellor.

Life

Grimald derived from a noble Rhine Franconian family. His uncle Hetto and his brother Theotgaud were successively the Archbishops of Trier. Still under the regency of Charlemagne, Grimald came to the court scriptorium for his education. He is said to have been a pupil of Alcuin, which is, however, unlikely as Alcuin already died in 804. Grimald received his higher education at the Abbey of Reichenau under Abbot Haito and Abbot Erlebald.
From 824, Grimald was chaplain in the imperial chapel at the court of Louis the Pious. In 833 at the latest, Grimald received Weissenburg Abbey in Speiergau and had St. Peter's church rebuilt which had been destroyed in a fire.
On 19 October 833, Grimald was for the first time mentioned as head of the imperial chancellery. He held this office until his withdrawal due to old age in 870. In the course of the battles within the dynasty of the Carolingians, Grimald was dismissed as Abbot of Weißenburg in 839, but was appointed Abbot of the Abbey of Saint Gall by Louis the German after the battle of Fontenoy in 841 and also retrieved the office of Abbot at Weissenburg Abbey in 847. He furthermore presided over a third monastery. In the course of his career, Grimald became an important confidant at the court of Louis the German. Besides his work as chancellor, he was additionally appointed as arch-chaplain in 848. Grimald's repeated activity as missus dominicus attests to his political influence.
Grimald had a significant share in the cultural and economical boom of the Abbey of Saint Gall in the ninth century. He generated a busy construction activity and transformed the library into a centre of sophisticated education in the eastern Frankish empire. His contemporaries already deemed Grimald an outstanding personage. Several well-known ninth century authors comment approvingly on the Abbot's scholarliness. Ratpert, a Saint Gall historian, dedicated an epigram to him and Walafrid Strabo even lauded Grimald's poetry, of which nothing has been preserved however. Instead, an index of Grimald's "private library" has been bequeathed which is still to a large part kept in the abbey library of Saint Gall.
In the year 870, Grimald abdicated his political offices due to old age and withdrew to Saint Gall where he died on 13 June 872. Dean Hartmut, who had during Grimald's frequent absence already been acting as his representative, eventually became the new abbot.

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