Wiger Trajectensis (Wiger Trajectensis/Frater Wygerus Alemannus/Wiger van Utrecht, fl. c. 1230 )

Wiger Trajectensis (Wiger Trajectensis/Frater Wygerus Alemannus/Wiger van Utrecht, fl. c. 1230 ) OM. Dutch prelate and compiler of an exempla collection. He was a well-educated cleric, who probably had received a theological education in one of the Parisian schools, possibly all the way up to the magisterium, was known for his knowledge of canon law, and later taught in the diocesan or capitular schools of the Utrecht diocese, as canon of St. Peter and as as Dean of St Peter (between 1213-and ca. 1220) and subsequently became a well- connected provost of of the Collegiate Church of St. Peter in Utrecht - and hence in close contact with many leading prelates and secular rulers of the region - before he joined the Franciscans after April 1228. He corresponded with churchmen such as Caesarius of Heisterbach (who in his Libri octo miraculorum says that a certain exemplum had been given to him by Wiger and mentions in passing that the Provost of St. Peter had recently become a Friar Minor ['Detulit michi magister Wigerus, prepositus in ecclesia Traiectenti, nunc in ordine fratrum Minorum conversus, quod dicturus sum', Die Wundergeschichten des Caesarius , ed. Hilke, 101]), Olivier of Paderborn and possibly also with Jacques de Vitry, and he also was on friendly terms with Elias of Cortuna during the latter's generalate. Chapter 8 of Eccleston's chronicle mentions that Wiger was sent on a visitation mission to the Franciscan English province at the request of Elias [calling Wiger 'valde famosus in peritia iuris'/'in omni honestate conspicuus', but also indicating that the visitation itself was a disaster]. David Ross Winter suggests that Wiger has suffered from a condemnatio memoriae in the order after the deposition of Elias, and that this is in part behind the fact that he is nearly completely ignored as an important author of a substantial exempla collection, and as an important learned friar during the early history of the Franciscan order. David Ross Winter even speculates about the possibility that Wiger joined Elias in exile to the court of Frederick II after the deposition of Elias at the Franciscan general chapter of 1239, but also indicates that this is mere conjecture, and that it is also possible that he ended his life as a clerical friar in the german order province. Whatever the validity of this, it is in any case certain that he became a friar when the Franciscan order was expanding into the German world, a process that had started with the decisions of the Bologna general chapter of 1221, and that had quite quickly progressed with the erection of friaries in Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Strasbourg and Cologne before 1225. As the Friars Minor were not yet established in the Low Countries as such, it is possible that Wiger relocated to Cologne to make his profession. In any case, the first recorded presence of a Minorite house in Utrecht dates from the 1240s. This is of course not to say that the Franciscans might not have been present there before.

Works

• Liber exemplorum sub titulis redactorum / Summa Wigeri : MSS Oxford, Corpus Christi College, 32, ff. 12vb-49va

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• Troyes, Bibliothèque municipale, 1548, ff. 99va-158v. His exempla also indicate that Wiger was well informed about recent political and ecclesiastical affairs far beyond the boundaries of the Utrecht diocese.

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Literature